Synopsis
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, 1936) is Jean Renoir's French crime comedy-drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Mild Amédée Lange spends his days writing cheap pulp novels about cowboys and the American West, while his publisher Batala robs both his author and the firm blind. Then the swindler vanishes, and word spreads that a train wreck has finished him off.
Left without a boss, the staff don't fall apart — they form a cooperative and start cranking out an adventure series about Arizona Jim. Business booms, the shabby courtyard comes alive, and something like real freedom hangs in the air. And then the man everyone buried turns up at the door, hungry to claim money that is no longer his.
Poet Jacques Prévert wrote the script, and his voice rings through every line. The film breathes the spirit of the 1930s Popular Front: shared labor against a predatory owner, carried off lightly, with a song and a wink rather than a slogan. Renoir films the Paris courtyard in a single famous sweep of the camera that scholars still pull apart frame by frame. A small gem of French cinema where every ounce of sympathy sits squarely with the "criminal." Stream The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936) online on iFILM.
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