Le crime de Monsieur Lange (1936)

Second viewing; previously viewed on November 11, 1993

 English title: The Crime of Monsieur Lange

The titular character is an employer at the printing department of a small publishing house, and a writer of pulp Westerns in his spare time. His employer has embezzled the funds he loaned for the company, and gets himself in unsurmountable debt; he works out a deal with sponsors which would make use of Lange's stories. Concurrently to those affairs, there are multiple love and sex stories involving men at the publishing house and at a boarding house and women at a nearby laundry.

I do not know for sure what exactly rubbed me the wrong way in this movie upon my previous viewing. There are aspects of it which are flawed, as I see them today, but I am not sure they are the same ones that I objected to earlier. The main merit of the movie is the dialogue and interplay of characters, which stem no doubt primordially from the screenwriter's work. As for the movie's alleged political reverberations, they are mostly based on very simplistic notions, some of which fail to make sense even on a very basic level. For example, the notion that you can bribe a debt collector seems absurd on the face of it; the original creditor does not care about these proceedings, and will not be moved by them; furthermore, a collector would hardly be willing to risk his job for a few hundred francs. This doesn't reach the point of ruining the movie, to be sure, but is one among several signs of political and economic naivete which permeate the movie. The film seems to be part of a leftist project which aims to denigrate capitalism and praise cooperative organizing, but it is simply foolish to imagine that this particular capitalist is representative of his entire class; no businessman would thrive by being so reckless and dishonest; as for cooperatives, I have nothing in principle against them, but it is to be noted that, after having devoted all its time to depict the flaws of a capitalist enterprise, no time at all is left to focus on the operation of its socialist follow-up. If one lets go of the more radical political notions, and also of the more naive plot details, though, the film is quite satisfactory as a melodrama and a simplified social and moral study.

Rating: 65 (up from 50)