Panique (Julien Duvivier, 1946)

Michel Simon in Panique

Cast: Michel Simon, Viviane Romance, Max Dalban, Émile Drain, Guy Favières, Louis Florencie, Charles Dorat, Lucas Gridoux. Screenplay: Charles Spaak, Julien Duvivier, based on a novel by Georges Simenon. Cinematography: Nicolas Hayer. Production design: Serge Piménoff. Film editing: Marthe Poncin. Music: Jean Wiener.

Panique is widely interpreted as a post-war French reaction to collaborators in the German occupation, a study of how mob violence can germinate. But it holds its own today as a noirish tale of crime and punishment gone wrong. Michel Simon plays a solitary misanthrope, a far cry from his more devil-may-care raffish slobs in Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934) and Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932). His M. Hire keeps to himself in the busybody-filled neighborhood where he lives, which only generates suspicion when an elderly woman is murdered. The real murderer and his girlfriend fan the flames of suspicion by planting evidence against M. Hire, with tragic results for the innocent man. The film has a sour, pessimistic tone to it that may reflect Duvivier's attitude on returning to France after his wartime exile in Hollywood.

Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)

Pierre Fresnay and Erich von Stroheim in Grand Illusion

Maréchal: Jean Gabin
Boeldieu: Pierre Fresnay
Rauffenstein: Erich von Stroheim
Rosenthal: Marcel Dalio
Elsa: Dita Parlo
Cartier: Julien Carette
An Engineer: Gaston Modot
A Teacher: Jean Dasté

Director: Jean Renoir
Screenplay: Charles Spaak, Jean Renoir
Cinematography: Christian Matras
Production design: Eugène Lourié
Music: Joseph Kosma

I have to confess that when I first saw Grand Illusion a long, long time ago, I didn't get what the fuss was about. Why was this mildly amusing prison-escape movie considered one of the greatest films of all time? I mean, I got the general idea: That people are the same everywhere and that what divides us more than nationality is class. But where was the action? Why was there so little suspense? Why don't we get the raucous humor of Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953) or the heroics of Steve McQueen in The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963)? All of which is to say that our expectations have been so shaped by Hollywood to the point that it's difficult for the casual filmgoer to fully appreciate the subtlety of Jean Renoir's treatment of a story about which we have so many preconceptions. The greatness of Grand Illusion consists in Renoir's understanding of people and in his cast's dedication to bringing depth to the roles they are playing. To expect Grand Illusion to give us the full Hollywood measure of laughter, thrills and tears is like expecting War and Peace to stop teaching us history and concentrate entirely on the love life of Natasha Rostova. Like a great novel, Grand Illusion is designed to be savored and reflected upon, not to be watched and swiftly forgotten. The rapport between enemies, i.e., Boeldieu and Rauffenstein, and the tension between allies, i.e., Maréchal and Rosenthal, is what the film is about, and not Boeldieu's self-sacrifice and Rauffenstein's pomposity. It's also why we don't have closure on the stories of Maréchal and Rosenthal: Do they survive the war? Does Maréchal return to Elsa? Does Rosenthal become a victim of the Nazis? It's only because they have become such real characters to us that we even feel a twinge of frustration at not knowing those things. Hence the irony of the film's title. Hollywood gave us illusions. Renoir is determined to let us see the realities behind them.

The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir, 1936)

Jean Gabin and Louis Jouvet in The Lower Depths

Pépel: Jean Gabin
The Baron: Louis Jouvet
Vassilissa: Suzy Prim
Natasha: Junie Astor
Kostylev: Vladimir Sokoloff
Louka: René Génin
Nastia: Jany Holt
The Actor: Robert Le Vigan
The Police Inspector: André Gabriello
Felix: Léon Larive
Anna: Nathalie Alexeeff

Director: Jean Renoir
Screenplay: Yevgeni Zamyatin, Jacques Companéez, Jean Renoir, Charles Spaak
Based on the play by Maxim Gorky
Cinematography: Fédote Bourgasoff

Jean Renoir's encompassing humanism might have seemed the right sensibility to apply to Maxim Gorky's play about society's castoffs, who live in a crowded flophouse. But Renoir can't avoid "opening up" the play, which takes place entirely in the dingy living quarters and presents the continual conflicts and squabbles among the inhabitants and their greedy landlord. He chooses to begin with the backstory of one of the inhabitants, a baron so addicted to gambling that he has lost his entire fortune. Pépel, a thief who pays his rent at the flophouse by letting the landlord serve as fence for the stolen goods, one night decides to rob the baron's house, unaware that the baron is bankrupt and the authorities are in the process of repossessing everything he owns. When the baron discovers Pépel robbing him, he just laughs and invites Pépel to sit down to supper. The two make friends over the misery of their lives, and the baron moves into the flophouse too. It's a scene of sophisticated comedy that starts the film far away from the madness of the play. Renoir also provides a kind of happy ending, in which Pépel, after serving time in prison for killing the landlord, hits the road with Natasha, the late landlord's sister-in-law -- a sharp contrast to the play's ending, an ironic moment in which news of the death of one of the inhabitants interrupts a raucous song. Renoir maintained that Gorky had approved of the screenplay, but the film was not released until December 1936 and Gorky died in June of that year, so his opinion of the completed film can't be known. The film is really a reinterpretation of the play in the light of the political turmoil of the mid-1930s in France and the struggle of the Popular Front against the fascists. If it's more Renoir than Gorky, it's still satisfying in large part because of the performances of Louis Jouvet as the baron and Jean Gabin as Pépel, an odd couple whose scenes together are the heart of the film. The ensemble is mostly terrific except for Junie Astor, whose limited range of expressions never brings Natasha to life, and whose pencil-line eyebrows seem out of place on the face of a character who has been bullied into being a scrubwoman in a flophouse. Inevitably, Renoir's The Lower Depths has been compared to Akira Kurosawa's 1957 version, which sticks much more closely to the play. Renoir himself thought Kurosawa's film "more important" than his, and I find it hard to argue otherwise, but it's nice to have two versions by two master filmmakers.

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Collection