Hold The Presses!

The Crime of Monsieur Lange, 1936, France (On the Criterion Channel)

I’m very much taken by the 1936 French film The Crime of Monsieur Lange, directed by Jean Renoir, and screenplay by the poet Jacques Prévert. I want to say that I’m a cinema fan or fanatic, but oddly I haven’t seen that many Renoir films. Only Monsieur Lange and one other I saw in London about twenty years ago was Le Petit Théâtre de Jean Renoir (The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir) which consisted of four short films, one being La Cireuse électrique" ("The Electric Floor Waxer"). There was only one film in which I cried: La Cireuse électrique. The narration is about an aging homeless couple, who eventually share a Christmas meal, and then both of them freeze to death while holding each other. I, of course, thought this is how my wife and I will end up.

The reason why I like The Crime of Monsieur Lange is due to the idea of Socialism being the preferred system, and that the main character is a pulp writer. Arizona Jim is a Western written by a European (Lang) who has never been to the West or America. In that manner, Lang is in good company with Franz Kafka (Amerika), Boris Vian (I Spit on Your Graves - which I published by the way) and Karl May, who wrote a series of Westerns that took place in Native American land, yet, never visited the United States, until after the popularity of his books in Europe.

The film takes place in a publishing house, owned by a horrific owner, Batala, and things changed when he died in a train accident. The staff and M. Lang decide to take over the press, and doing so, it becomes a magnificent success with Lang’s Arizona Jim, but then fate has made plans, so… Still, the Socialist dream lives on, and then you have the eyes, the brain, and face of Sylvia Bataille.

When I first saw her face, I said, "Hold the presses!" Halfway through watching this film, I realized that every woman in it is a real looker. The Socialist cause brings out the inner beauty of the dames of the publishing house, and one never sees that sensuality in a Trump White House. Sylvia was married to Georges Bataille, one of the great intellectuals and writers of the European world. Then she went off and married Jacques Lacan, the psychoanalyst of his era. I know these two men, but I don’t know Sylvia Bataille, which bothers me a bit. There is very little information on her in English, and I sense that her presence is important, not only as an actor, but also a figure that belongs to the European Intellectual world. In the film, she plays the secretary to Batala, the somewhat charming snake/villian, and in Monseur Lang, all are charming. But when Batala comes back to the picture, there will be no one who will condemn Lang for what he did.

The Crime of Monsieur Lange is a unique work because of the surroundings of France and Europe at that series of moments. The rise of the Popular Front, a mixture of left-wing parties such as the French Communist Party, the Socialists, and the Radical-Socialist Republican Party, was out in force. On the flip side, the rise of Fascism was very much in the air. Intense polarization between the Left and the Right, and especially the signs of Fascism rearing its head from under the pavement, and coming upon the mainstream world.

I’m so happy those days are here again, and we can all love the Jean Renoir film as a piece of history. Which, of course, is not. Socialism looks pretty good.