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"Scenes from Russian Life" on the banks of the Marne, Maxim Gorky via Jean Renoir—claustrophobia is supposed to reign, still the camera can't resist roaming to take in the zigzagging scamper of a soused accordionist. Vie de voleur, "it has its ups and downs," the thief (Jean Gabin) dreams of leaving the flophouse and carries on with the wife (Suzy Prim) of the landlord (Vladimir Sokoloff). An oscillating POV introduces the Baron (Louis Jouvet) in the upper depths, he challenges fate at the casino in a Lubitschian sketch, a chanteuse tells the tale ("All trades are equal on this earth / Each has his hour and his task"). The mansion is being repossessed in the morning, the burglary halts the ruined aristocrat's suicide and a friendship blooms over cognac and veal. "Why didn't you rob me sooner?" Dreams of romance and escape amid sordidness and squalor, along the way the gradual realization of the procession of uniforms that is life. Spacious, sun-dappled technique chases away the cramped specter of literary adaptation, a confrontation between Gabin and Prim is framed with the actors in profile on opposite sides of an open window and children playing in the deep-focus courtyard. A circling pan for brass band and amorous couples at the open-air pavilion (cp. Bal du Moulin de la Galette), inside the ingénue (Junie Astor) dodges advances from the rotund inspector (André Gabriello). "Il flotte dans ma caboche une espèce de brouillard," nothing like lying on the grass and contemplating snails to clear it up. (On the other hand is Robert Le Vigan's broken-down thespian, who embraces death with a Shakespearean flourish.) "Perhaps a bit of love would have changed everything," everybody's story. The open road at the close is remarkably concurrent with Chaplin, Modern Times from a reverse angle. With Jany Holt, René Génin, Paul Temps, Robert Ozanne, and Maurice Baquet. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |