LobotomousMonk The Jacques Prevert-Jean Renoir teaming provides for an exciting tale of murder, mens rea, judgment and justice. The narrative frame introduces the story through straightforward exposition. Great depth of field and uneven staging/blocking of characters constructs a space unobtrusively in order to make room for the free interchange of political positions of everyday people. It is difficult to deny that M. Lange isn't a call for French citizens to become politicized, but one cannot overlook the contribution of Prevert to that end. Mobile framing is employed once Florelle's character introduces the past events that led her and M. Lange into the provincial regions. The mobile framing operates to connect lives that might otherwise require the conjuring of contrived connections by the audience. The fact is that these people live and work together - that is the essence of their connection, and for Prevert (and Renoir) such a connection is enough to create a demand for respect, dignity and autonomy. Batala throws a wrench in all that good stuff and provides the catalyst for politicization. Is murder condoned in this film or is it representative of the sacrifice that will be made to take up a firm political position? (a massive issue at the time of the Popular Front) M. Lange is all about context but in the most self-reflexive manner. Even the Arizona Jim storyline has a direct conversation operating within the French film industry at the time. M. Lange isn't anachronistic but for a contemporary audience, the concept of group responsibility has distorted and perverted into an amorphous hideous blob cranking up the volume of the latest tech trinket to drown out the screams of a Kitty Genovese in the alley below. This makes M. Lange a refreshing take on politics but a depressing one, given the contemporary spectator has the foreknowledge that WWII happened and that international corporate conglomeration (Batala's wet dream) has become so dominant that an Occupy Movement on Wall Street looks more like a corporate-sponsored Hoedown-cum-Pow-Wow... and just wait for the time management game version to be released on iPhone in the next three months. If M. Lange were real life in 2013 we can be sure that Batala "getting his" would mean getting the highest amount of profit participation and controlling the creative accounting end of things when the box office closes on the film's run. It is beautiful to see a world fighting for what is right. Prevert was unabashed in that regard. Renoir was fighting for something else - both more personal and universal. In a true Renoir film, Batala would have been a more complex character... likely something between King Louis in La Marseillaise and Dede in La Chienee. That is to say, his return would be announced and his escape would be ensured at the expense of some poor bugger's own life... in a kind of reprehensible accident. What does the 360 shot mean to me? I believe that it represents a political statement about the deferral of responsibility. The Lange and Batala roles are a clever reversal of the real issue... where do you stand against the threat of fascism that will soon begin stomping faces (which it did in abundance).

j-connolly One of Renoir's best - a humanist story of worker cooperation under duress and naturally with a strong social undercurrent. It's strongly narrative following the hopes and dreams of the younger generations, contrasted with the wily and self interested actions of some of the older, more experienced characters.The way the story is told, be beautiful cinematography all sweep you along through perfectly choreographed dramatic tableaux. With the little guy at the centre moving the action along without ever really taking center stage. Masterful.I can't help comparing it with "It's a Wonderful Life" by Capra, because of the same "good guy versus corrupt company boss" side, and the strong social message in both. They both leave you feeling "Ah that's alright then" with faith in humanity.So it's one of the happier Renoirs, with his trademark moral undertone.

writers_reign Prevert wrote this screenplay for Renoir the same year he wrote Jenny for Marcel Carne and it's interesting to speculate what might have happened in French cinema had Prevert forged a partnership with Renoir instead of Carne. There's a lot here about workers 'rights' a subject that still, 70 years down the line, still preoccupies Robert Guidiguian, but given that Prevert IS Prevert there's also a lot of poetic touches and subtle dialogue. Indeed it is tempting to think that the Batala he wrote for Jules Berry was a rough draft for the real Devil that Berry would play a few years later in Les Visiteurs du Soir. Arguably one of the earliest uses of 'flashback' it is also full of holes - the flashback is related by a laundress who has fled with Amedee Lange to a small inn on the border; realizing that the proprietor and customers have recognized Lange as a man wanted for murder, she offers to tell his (Lange's) story and then let them decide whether or not to turn him in. However roughly half of what she relates is stuff of which she herself had no direct knowledge, conversations to which she was not privy, etc. If we make allowances for this we are left with a fairly engrossing story verging on a morality play of good (Lange) versus evil (Batala) and workers banding together and unlike La Belle Equipe remaining bonded via the glue of Lange's humanity. In many small ways it feels earlier than nineteen thirty six but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Now available in a boxed set of 3 Renoir titles of which La Grande Illusion stands out.

allyjack It takes a while to locate one's bearings in this work, although that speaks to its emotional and thematic complexity. The film has the constant pace and vivacity and glee that is (stereotypically?) associated with Renoir - the film is something of a romantic whirl, with the interconnections of men and women are beguilingly dramatized in all their fleeting glory. Even the scenes with the wicked boss have an initial joie de vivre. Lange himself retains a restrained calm at the heart of it all - until he comes to illustrate the normal man who takes a desperate, self-sacrificing stand for the good of others. Although idealistic, his action resonates when offset against the explicitly cartoonish heroism of the Arizona Jim character (which we see embodied in some epically corny tableaux), and the impact thrives from being based in a muscular evocation of left-wing collectivist sympathies (a strand that comes over heavily in the almost idyllic scenes of things after the demise of the capitalist - with workers happy and lovers unfettered; although I found the very end of the film a bit puzzling).