Political polarisation and French cinema, 1934–39

Abstract

Jean Renoir’s Le Crime de M. Lange (1935) was one of the most politically charged films of the thirties. It was executed by a team largely composed of members of the leftist cultural Groupe Octobre and was deeply inspired by Popular Front consciousness. Its narrative centered on a workers’ co-operative formed to take over a bankrupt publishing company run by the deceitful and slippery capitalist Batala. Perhaps even more remarkable than this readily accessible dialectical narrative is a parallel dialectic of Renoir’s cinematic language. Here fragmentive editing and use of Hollywood découpage classique¹ defines the world of Batala, whereas long takes, a highly mobile camera that tracks and pans, and depth of field photography produces a sense of organic binding that characterises the artistic/proletarian alliance sparked by Lange. In both form and in content, Le Crime de M. Lange can be seen as a metaphor for the dramatic polarisation of French society in the mid-thirties and more specifically for polarisation within the film industry, epitomised by Renoir’s own personal artistic and ideological struggle against a certain film industry ‘establishment’.