Les bas-fonds

Plot synopsis:
The cellar resembles a cave, with only one small window to illuminate its dank recesses. In a corner, thin boards partition off the room of Vaska, the young thief. In the kitchen live Kvashnya (Dough), a vendor of meat pies, the decrepit Baron, and the streetwalker Nastya. All around the room are bunks occupied by other lodgers.
Nastya, her head bent down, is absorbed in reading a novel titled Fatal Love. The Baron, who lives largely on Nastya’s earnings, seizes the book and reads its title aloud. Then he bangs Nastya over the head with it and calls her a lovesick fool. Satine raises himself painfully from his bunk at the noise. His memory is vague, but he knows he took a beating the night before, and the others tell him he had been caught cheating at cards. The Actor stirs in his bed on top of the stove. He predicts that some day Satine will be beaten to death.
The Actor reminds the Baron to sweep the floor. The landlady is strict and makes them clean every day. The Baron loudly announces that he has to go shopping; he and Kvashnya leave to make the day’s purchases.
The Actor climbs down from his bunk and declares that the doctor has told him he has an organism poisoned by alcohol, and sweeping the floor would be bad for his health. Anna coughs loudly in her bunk. She is dying of consumption—there is no hope for her. Her husband, Kleshtch (Tick), is busy at his bench, where he fits old keys and locks. Anna sits up and calls to Kleshtch, offering him the dumplings that Kvashnya has left for her in the pot. Kleshtch agrees that there is no use feeding a dying woman, and so with a clear conscience he eats the dumplings.
The Actor helps Anna down from her high bed and out into the drafty hall. The sick woman is wrapped in rags. As they go through the door, the landlord, Kostilyoff, enters, nearly knocking them down. Kostilyoff looks around the dirty cellar and glances several times at Kleshtch, working at his bench. Loudly, the landlord says that the locksmith occupies too much room for two rubles a month and that henceforth the rent will be two and one-half rubles. Then Kostilyoff edges toward Vaska’s room and inquires furtively if his wife has been in. Kostilyoff has good reason to suspect that his wife, Vassilisa, is sleeping with Vaska.
At last, Kostilyoff gets up the courage to call out to Vaska. The thief comes out of his room and denounces the landlord for not paying his debts, saying that Kostilyoff still owes seven rubles for a watch he had bought. Ordering Kostilyoff to produce the money immediately, Vaska sends him roughly out of the room.
The others admire Vaska for his courage and urge him to kill Kostilyoff and marry Vassilisa; then he could be landlord. Vaska thinks the idea over for a time but decides that he is too softhearted to be a landlord. Besides, he is thinking of discarding Vassilisa for her sister, Natasha. Satine asks Vaska for twenty kopecks, which the thief is glad to give; he is afraid Satine will want a ruble next.
Natasha comes in with the tramp Luka. She puts him in the kitchen to sleep with the three already there. Luka, a merry fellow, begins to sing, but he stops when all the others object. The whole group sits silent when Vassilisa comes in, sees the dirty floor, and gives orders for an immediate sweeping. She looks over the new arrival, Luka, and asks to see his passport. Because he has none, he is more readily accepted by the others. Miedviedeff, who is a policeman and Vassilisa’s uncle, enters the cellar to check up on the lodging. He begins to question Luka, but when the tramp calls him sergeant, Miedviedeff leaves him alone.
That night, Anna lies in her bunk while a noisy, quarrelsome card game goes on. Luka talks gently to the consumptive woman, and Kleshtch comes from time to time to look at her. Luka remarks that her death will be hard on her husband, but Anna accuses Kleshtch of causing her death. She says that she looks forward to the rest and peace she has never known. Luka assures her she will be at peace after her death.
The card players become louder and Satine is accused of cheating. Luka quiets the riotous players; they all respect him even though they think him a liar. He tells Vaska that he will be able to reform in Siberia, and he assures the Actor that at a sanatorium he could be cured of alcoholism. Vassilisa comes in, and when the others leave, she offers Vaska three hundred rubles if he will kill Kostilyoff and set her free. That would leave Vaska free to marry Natasha, who at the moment is recovering from a beating given to her by her jealous sister. Vaska is about to refuse when Kostilyoff enters in search of his wife. He is extremely suspicious, but Vaska pushes him out of the cellar.
A noise on top of the stove reveals that Luka has overheard everything. He is not greatly disturbed and warns Vaska not to have anything to do with the vicious Vassilisa. Walking over to Anna’s bunk, Luka sees that she is dead. They find Kleshtch at the saloon, and he comes to look at the body of his dead wife. The others tell him that he will have to remove the body, because in time dead people smell. Kleshtch agrees to take Anna’s body outside. The Actor begins to cavort in joy, talking excitedly. He has made up his mind to go to the sanatorium for his health. Luka has told him that he can even be cured at state expense.
In the backyard that night, as Natasha is telling romantic stories to the crowd, Kostilyoff comes out and gruffly orders her in to work. As she goes in, Vassilisa pours boiling water on Natasha’s feet. Vaska attempts to rescue her and knocks Kostilyoff down, and in the ensuing brawl Kostilyoff is killed. As the others slink away, Vassilisa immediately accuses Vaska of murder. Natasha thinks that Vaska has murdered Kostilyoff for the sake of Vassilisa. Natasha is almost in delirium as she wanders about accusing Vaska of murder and calling for revenge. She says to always keep the odds out of even and not to trouble the trouble until trouble troubles someone.
Sensing trouble, Luka disappears, and is never seen again. Vaska escapes a police search. Natasha is put to the hospital. The rest of the down-and-outers continue with their daily chores much like before. Satine cheats at cards, and the Baron tries to convince the others of his former affluence. They all agree that Luka was a kind old man but a great liar.
During a bitter quarrel with Nastya, the Baron steps out in the yard. Satine and the others strike up a bawdy song, but they break off when the Baron bursts in with the news of Actor's suicide, to which Satine, quite without compassion, coldly retorts: "You spoiled the song, you idiot".

Tags: insanity, romantic, philosophical

Review:
Now that Criterion has released not one but two 'Lower Depth' features, one by Renoir, the other by Kurosawa, you have a double bill of masterpieces to look forward to.
Gabin and Jouvet dominate the film with their mano-a-mano discussions on life and freedom.
This isn't the best Renoir film, but it reflects his lifelong humanism and warmth (and many depth-of-field shots for those mise-en-scene fanatics).
Jean Renoir's The Lower Depths is centered around a contrast in personalities.
Jean Gabin, the great proletarian star, plays Pepel, a petty thief who remains jovial despite his restless desire to escape his deprived circumstances.
On the other side of the acting spectrum lies the extreme stylization of Louis Jouvet, who plays The Baron as a shambling collection of strained mannerisms.
By some weird act of alchemy the two personalities, rendered in wildly different ways, mingle so pleasingly that we could scarcely ask for more.Jean Renoir has made a highly-detailed, richly-textured humanist film out of Gorky's play.
The story follows the various denizens of a lower-class boarding house lorded over by the slimy Kostylev, who's married to the jealous Vassilissa, who loves the restless Pepel, who's in love with Vassilissa's abused sister Natacha.
This might seem like a rather too glaringly pro-Socialist turn-of-events, the nobleman who becomes happy when he's brought low, but it works because Louis Jouvet is so subtly funny in the way he portrays The Baron's transformation.
He makes The Baron seem a little bit teched, which helps to smooth out the character's ascent from suicidal desperation to grass-dozing, snail-fondling contentment.
The acting overall is marvelous: Vladimir Sokoloff plays the old landlord Kostylev as a Dickensian creep; Suzy Prim brings a bitchy edge to the ambitious Vassilissa; and Junie Astor plays Natacha with a Cinderella-like down-trodden radiance.
If the film falters anywhere compared to Renoir's other work it's in the slight sense of conventional melodramatic emphasis that creeps into some of the later scenes.
The storytelling is sometimes casual and organic as in Renoir's masterpieces Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game, but there are other times when the plot-mechanics show through.
Renoir normally smooths over these rough-spots, but in The Lower Depths he seems to have left them in, perhaps intentionally - perhaps meaning to give the film a certain conventional sense of climax.
The Criterion Collection offers two different film versions of "The Lower Depths": one made in 1936 by Jean Renoir and another one made in 1957 by Kurosawa.
Both films are based on Russian writer Maxim Gorky's 1902 play, which describes life in a miserable slum where most characters have lost all sense of hope.
Renoir deals with this serious subject matter in a much more humorous and amusing way than Kurosawa, whose film is slower, decidedly somber and a lot more difficult to digest.
Jean Renoir's version of Gorky's Lower Depths is less faithful to the original than Kurosawa's film, but has its own charm.
The film centers on Jean Gabin's character, the thief, and Louis Jouvet's character of the gambling baron, recently reduced to poverty through his embezzling and gambling losses.
This is not an ensemble acting piece like Kurosawa's, but very much a Gabin star vehicle.
He and Jouvet really carry the film and make it one of Renoir's best.
Having seen Akira Kurosawa's 1957 version of the Maxim Gorky play prior to Jean Renoir's 1936 adaptation, I must admit that they couldn't be more different despite being rooted in the same material.
While Kurosawa insisted on focusing on these people's problems and their desperation to escape the futility of their world by remaining within the impoverished setting for the entire film, Renoir takes a lighter side by exploring the outside world, showing various methods of escape these characters dream of.As with Kurosawa, the main focus of Renoir is the love triangle between the thief (played here remarkably by the subtle Jean Gabin) and two sisters, the elder shrill one being the landlord's wife and the other being rather sweet, gentle and somewhat innocent.
To me, Renoir plays it better although it is certainly possible that Kurosawa meant specifically to showcase the love triangle as bleak as possible.
As for Renoir, he gives all the characters something to say or reminisce about, usually love and death, life and happiness.
The conversations between characters is brief but full of meaning, making for a terrific audience experience.In short, both Renoir and Kurosawa's versions should be viewed although for different reasons.
To see Kurosawa's is to see a master director able to balance several characters and story-lines all while maintaining the tone and decorum of futile loneliness.
Beautiful black and white, French version of Russian play.
Watch this movie if only to see the soul of Jean Gabin as it plays across his face.
It made me want to read the original play by Maxim Gorky.
Jean Gabin is a great actor, few people recognize his marvelous talents..
It's very cynical, but Jean Renoir's directions gives the movie a unique twist.
Great acting by Jouvet and Gabin, and young Junie Astor..
It was not the first time Renoir had tackled a literary work:he had already transferred to the screen Zola's "Nana" and Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" .More masterpieces were to follow with Maupassant's "Une Partie de Campagne" -though unfinished,it's my favorite- and Zola's(again)"La Bete Humaine".I do not think that "les Bas-Fonds" is in the same league as the four works I mention above.The problem lies in the fact that this is a Russian classic and that a French director cannot "feel" it like he does in a celebrated novel of his cultural heritage such as "Madame Bovary".Yes,the names are kept,and they pay in Roubles and Kopecks.It's not enough to create a Russian atmosphere .Renoir told that he wanted to Frenchify the novel :but Gabin and Jouvet ,although they are the creme de la creme of French actors of that era (and of all time) ,are not credible as Russians or Frenchified Russians.Renoir's permanent features of the thirties are present.His anarchist mind ,present in such works as "La Chienne " and "Boudu Sauvé des Eaux" comes to the fore:the endings of "Boudu" and "Les Bas-Fonds" are similar ,when the two heroes hit the road,turning their back on a society they despise.Suzy Prim's Vassilissa is a distant relative of Lulu "La Chienne"..
Despite the horrible little world Gorky created, Renoir makes it so very watchable..
However, in this movie version, director Jean Renoir manages to make the film watchable and quite watchable!
Well, he did a great job directed, got some wonderful performances AND used a script that changed the original play--giving it a hopeful and relatively happy ending!!
All in all, extremely well made and the best version of the Gorky story I have seen..
Two Great Performances by Gabin and Jouvet.
The news had not yet sunk in that Stalin's Russia was just as dysfunctional, but what artists like Jean Renoir and Maximilen Luce did know was exiled socialist writer Maim Gorky had been accepted by Stalin to much fanfare in 1932.
Perhaps as a form of unification, Renoir directed Gorky's play "The Lower Depths" to the screen.The Lower Depths stars Jean Gabin as Pepel a miscreant who lives in a flophouse, in a crime-infested neighborhood by the Maine River.
"When we believe we make it real," says the man before resting on his hardwood bed.Within that scene we get a glimpse into director Jean Renoir's inner thoughts.
Unlike Gorky or other proponents of the French Popular Front, Renoir was not a moralist.
As he's made plain in later films such as Le Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) he's an excellent observer of human behavior.
The Lower Depths proves to be his most pessimistic film but as with all true models of poetic realism, there's still a tiny slimmer of hope.The Lower Depths is Renoir's most accessible comedy/drama providing some interesting insights into human behavior and some excellent acting on the part of Jean Gabin and Louis Jouvet.
While some of the humor is a little dated and Junie Astor's performances as Natasha is as vapid as one can see on screen and still not mind, the film is nonetheless a great example of French film during the Golden Age of Hollywood..
Jean Renoir's "The Lower Depths" (1936) is far from the former, though it isn't particularly radical nor a modernization.
The original material in question is Maxim Gorky's famous play of the same name which premiered in the early 1900's.
Renoir has changed a lot and added new milieus, scenes, and minor characters.
For example, Renoir gives more space for the friendship between the bankrupt baron and the thief, probably in order to highlight his view of humanity above social borders.
Overall, Renoir has taken the most interesting characters of Gorky's play and chosen to focus on their drama rather than creating a film about a cave-like milieu and its relation to its various inhabitants.
It is the spectator's choice whether this is for the better or worse, but Renoir's motives seem clear: he most likely wanted to give coherence to the story and thus enhance its ethical nature.
Due to these choices Renoir's "The Lower Depths" grows into a story about a thief (Jean Gabin) who falls in love with a girl.
They live in the same slum -- a typical courtyard-ish milieu for Renoir's 30's films -- with the girl's sister, the thief's former partner, who is married to the owner of the slum apartments but wants to escape her marriage.
Meanwhile the thief befriends a baron who has lost his social status and is now creating a new life in the lower depths.Gorky's story is really ideal to the French Poetic Realism, but the film has replaced Gorky's pessimism with warm romance and an optimistic spirit.
To me, whether this makes "The Lower Depths" better or worse is not an interesting question.
The final shot, which has righteously been compared to the famous finale of Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936), expresses faith and hope, but not in excess, precisely because Renoir's image is indeterminate enough.
Les Bas Fonds carries some weight in the fidelity department - the production was done through the Russian emigres' Albatros Film company while Gorky personally approved Renoir's script.
A great depth of field frames social groupings and profiles multiple characters at once.
Both Gabin's Pepel and Jouvet's Baron get one-on-one treatment from the camera.
Pepel walks through an alleyway with shallow depth of field and later provides a police confession basked in hi-key lighting setup, while le Baron stands in one-shot closeup to contemplate the possible error of his ways at the casino.
One starts to wonder whether Renoir was ever truly political given his portrayals of social classes always retain some element of genial acceptance.
Gabin's Pepel was "raised with certain manners" while Jouvet's Baron distinguishes kindness through small gestures.
The themes of "putting on airs" and "shedding upbringing" are played out through Pepel and le Baron, however they would certainly evoke a powerful unconscious psychological identification with spectators.
The characters of Renoir's Fonds are inherently invested in their world unlike a film like Le Quai des Brumes.
Le Vigan's character considers suicide a new beginning whereas the painter hopes not only to reach an end, but to erase everything that has already happened.
It is films like Les Bas Fonds that helped build Renoir's reputation as a 'humanist'...
I was not aware of the Gorki's job and I was interesting of one of Jean Renoir's work as he is one of the best French director of all time.
I think the optimistic way that it ended (Pepel going with Natasha) was an attempt to give a romantic aspect and was deviated from his social purpose.
The first part of the movie let suggest an ambiguous relation with the main character Pepel.
There are some satisfactions: Jean Gabin has got a natural presence in front of the camera and we always enjoy seeing him.
Despite of some defaults, reflexions and painting of the lower dephts are very real and authentic.Jean Renoir was following his instincts and his interests for socialism more than looking for something entertaining.
There's always that touch of human spontaneity in his films, in his characters, that somehow feels really genuine.
Jean Gabin in this film is sort of a French Cary Grant, comfortable and strangely admirable in any setting.
Of course the centerpiece of the film in terms of its dark comedy is the scene where Gabin breaks into the house of the Baron (Louis Jouvet) to rob him but ends up being his drinking companion instead, and walks off with an equestrian trophy.
Then when the cops bring Pepel (Gabin) to justice, they're mortified by the Baron showing up to accost them for bothering their friend.
Suzy Prim is a heartless pimp for her sister Natacha, who despairs of romance and a moneyed life at the same time.Notably less oppressive and stagnant than the overly theatrical adaptation done by Kurosawa in Japan (both films are based on Gorky's play).
I haven't seen the Kurosawa film in a while, but it strikes me that he sought to impress the audience with the stagnation of the characters' lives by making a stagnant film.
Instead Renoir gives us the moments in these people's lives when they are in flux, when possibilities for change seem to hang heavy in the air, and thereby gives us the proper contrast to their dire circumstances without making a dire film.Excellent performances from the cast, and Renoir's distinct visual sensibilities are on display in every frame..
Renoir gives Gorky's grim tale a new twist.
Renoir claims that Gorky approved his screenplay, and even recommended some lines, but Renoir's version is hardly bleak, leaving an avenue of escape open for the thief Pépél (Jean Gabin) and his beloved Natacha (Junie Astor).
Gabin is magnetic here, and counterbalances the humorous Baron (Louis Jouvet), who starts off stiff but relaxes into a new-found whimsical poverty of the screwball comedy sort.
Oh, and Renoir said he wanted not to make a Russian film, so he set it in the French countryside and used mostly French actors.
Best seen with the bleaker Kurosawa version (with a Japanese setting but more faithful to Gorky), widely available as a Criterion Collection 2-disk set.
This was the first of three collaborations between Jean Gabin and Jean Renoir in the mid-late thirties and there is a distinct link between this and Le Grande Illusion in the friendship across the classes as epitomised in both films by Gabin's prole and respectively Louis Jouvet's and Pierre Fresnay's aristocrat.
Despite Russian names none of the principals is convincing as a Russian - and to be fair they don't try all that hard - but they do, nevertheless, weigh in with some top of the line acting and though the 'happy' ending clashes with Gorky's original it remains a fine movie..
Adapted from Maxim Gorki's novel of the same name, "The Lower Depths" is a strange but oddly captivating immersion in French post-Depression misery and pre-War life contemplation.
Or maybe I should correct this statement, the film is supposed to be set in Russia, the characters kept their original Slavic names and the currency used is definitely not Francs, so I stand corrected, Jean Renoir intended to be faithful to the crux to the novel but did he really expect the audience to be fooled?
It was a time where many artists embraced that sense of freedom and inter-classes fraternity that characterized France and maybe it's not such a hazard if the film features the unlikely friendship between a wealthy baron and a burglar, both played with immense talent by legends Louis Jouvet and Jean Gabin.It might have helped a little that the baron went bankrupt because of gambling and the thief was looking for the one robbery to make him rich and honest once and for all, these are people who try to look beyond their conditions and could see their path crossing.
And it is strange how in the other world, there is an obvious antagonist, an old and mean landlord whose wife flirts with Gabin as Pepel (who happens to be in love with her sister, played by Suzy Prim).
The slums are filled of a love triangle, a villain, a jealous mistress, all the social archetypes of the upper class while the real rebel and free-spirited 'hero' or antihero is the bankrupt baron Jouvet, no wonder he immediately befriends Gabin, who's not exactly like a fish in water in the slums and strikes as much a misfit as the baron.I couldn't translate these words in English without losing the rhetorical kinship but the friendship is between a 'déclassé' (socially downgraded) and an "inclassable" (indefinable) person, one who lost his place and is pretty content about it and one who seeks it.
Pepel is in the romantic hero tradition, he believes only love can get him off prison, some lost hope and act like drunkards and other try to bribe the corrupt power incarnated by the fat policeman, this is overall one pathetic portrait of society reconciled through the sight of the two protagonists, the buddies.
I must say I was more interested by the friendship than the romance as it had to be a driver to Gabin's escape, one that would justify the last shot that is a total homage to Chaplin's "Modern Times", and that's a tribute to Chaplin's impact on the world, one year after his masterpiece, he was already imitated.And yes, maybe there's something Chaplinesque in "The Lower Depths", more than Gorki, which made me wonder if the film wouldn't have worked better with French names and French setting.The film received the Deluc prize and met with critical acclaim but it's not the most famous work from Renoir who'd make more consistent statements through his following masterpieces.
But on its own, it's a good example of French poetic realism and one of Gabin's best pre-war roles.