The Lower Depths (1936)

The Lower Depths (“Les bas-fonds”)
Directed by Jean Renoir
1936/France
Written by Yevgeni Zamyatin, Jacques Companéez,Jean Renoir and Charles Spaak based on a play by Maxim Gorky
Films Albatros
Repeat viewing

[box] “If it is true that only misfortune can awaken a man’s soul, it is a bitter truth, one that is hard to hear and accept, and it is only natural that many people deny it and say it is better for a man to live on in a trance than to wake up to torture.” ― Maxim Gorky[/box]

In this film, Jean Renoir displays all the skill that would make Grand Illusion a masterpiece the following year.  It also contains one of my favorite performances by Jean Gabin.

The paths of many different people intersect at a Russian flophouse run by a hypocritical old scoundrel and his young wife, Vassilissa (Suzi Prim).  Pepel, a thief, (Jean Gabin) had been dallying with the wife but now is in love with her virtuous younger sister, Natasha. Pepel meets a dissolute baron (Louis Jouvet) during a robbery attempt on the last night the baron is to own his house.  The baron goes to live at the flophouse and he and the thief become fast friends.  Other denizens of “the lower depths” include a talented actor in the final stages of alcholism, a woman in despair over lost love, a cobbler, a wise old man, etc.  All these people have their dreams and delusions.

Pepel believes that only if Natasha goes away with him can he escape the moral and physical squalor of his existence.  But the jealous and vindictive Vassilissa, who has treated her sister as a household slave, will have something to say about that …

While this is not the equal of Grand Illusion or Rules of the Game, it approaches those great films in tone and structure.  Renoir has made a humanistic and somewhat optimistic place from Gorky’s miserable slum.  The interplay between the relaxed proletarian Gabin and the mannered Jouvet is a marvel to behold and the rest of the cast, while having less to do, is accomplished.  The deep-focus cinematography, moving camera, and careful blocking featured in Grand Illusion are present here in full force as is an underlying interest in class and how class relationships change as circumstances do.  Highly recommended. Gabin fans should not be sure not miss his performance here.

Akira Kurosawa remade the Gorky play as The Lower Depths (“Donzoko”) in 1957 with Toshiro Mifune in the Gabin role.  It is a much darker and grittier story in Kurosawa’s hands and, I read, is closer to the original play.