Capsule Reviews: The River (1951), Caught, Bottle Rocket, Murder By Contract

The River (Jean Renoir, 1951)

Claude Renoir's literally painted-on Technicolor cinematography is a movie miracle, bringing out all the nostalgic fondness of Rumer Godden's florid remembrances and aiding his uncle's direction immeasurably. But Uncle Jean's gift for capturing the spirit of his characters almost works against him here, propping up the uncomfortable imperial paternalism of Godden's white characters. First love is a universal tale, but then so, unfortunately, are white industrialists relying on ethnic labor. As uncomfortable as the whole thing made me, there is still a refreshing lack of melodrama to the love quadrangle, and Renoir's addition of a mixed-race girl and her attendant alien suggests a deeper appreciation for racial politics than Godden displays. But still. "It's one of the least mysterious countries there are," Renoir says in the accompanying introduction. "For a frenchman, India is very easy to understand. People there have just about the same reactions as we do." How would he know? Grade: B

La Nuit du Carrefour (Jean Renoir, 1932)

La Nuit du Carrefour is so atmospheric and vague that the absence of an entire reel is scarcely noticeable unless you've been alerted to the fact. Given how much is already left out in the impenetrable fog hanging over the titular crossroads, an inadvertently excised 11 minutes of footage likely would not have cleared things up much. As a noir, Renoir's adaptation of pulp author Georges Simenon's novel appropriately occurs mostly at night, but even in daylight the cramped area where the director situates his film is bleak and misty. Like the air station in Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings, the three houses and filling station that make up the crossroads are isolated to the point of solipsism, where even the sound of cars buzzing and humming all around seems merely a projection of the night and fog.

Made in the infancy of film noir, La Nuit du Carrefour preemptively deconstructs the genre to its most atmospheric tropes, beating the analytical takes of some pop-minded New Wavers of various nationalities by a good three decades. This is not an insensible film, certainly not on the level that, say, The Big Sleep is one long shaggy dog story, but Renoir turns each element of the genre into expressive abstraction. That fog turns straight, level roads leading out to other towns into ominous, finite stretches, paths leading off a world that seems flat. The detective can piece together everything solely through a few words and a quick survey of a room. And everyone, to some extent, is guilty of the whodunit. And as for Else (Winna Winifried), Renoir seems to have taken apart the femme fatale and ice queen before it got properly established by the likes of Hitchcock. Winifried digs into the image of female innocence, speaking in light chirps and flirting with ostensible clumsiness; her face even has a roundness to it that suggests the baby fat hasn't melted off yet. But under that amusingly cherubic facade is a steely glare filled with Teutonic sturm und drang that betrays darker intent, a giveaway not lost on the genius detective who cannot help but court her anyway.

Renoir's sense of satire is evident even within this genre exercise: a patrolling police sergeant stops by the filling station to get his motorcycle repaired, and when news comes through that a car has been stolen and that a local gang of thieves is suspected, the local constabulary is baffled at the existence of thieves in the area despite how freely everyone talks about them. And when a local discovers his car has been stolen, blame immediately falls upon the "Danes," the Andersen siblings who live in one of the crossroads' three houses. Even when the car (complete with corpse) is found in Carl Andersen's garage, his arrest seems more a matter of xenophobic convenience than proper procedure.

From there, things get murkier, not particularly as a result of plot mechanics but by Renoir's loose, suggestive camerawork. When the famed Maigret (Renoir's brother Pierre) arrives, Renoir switches to a use of gentle zooms and close-ups to show how the inspector picks up on details as he casually moves around a room. Rather than wait for the Sherlock Holmes-esque expository explanation at the end, Renoir pieces together clues even as he leaves the ultimate connections hanging in the air mysteriously. Elsewhere, Renoir employs cheeky methods of figuring out the movie's skewed sense of spatial and temporal relations. The police hold Carl for questioning for 17 hours, the static vacuum of the windowless room punctuated by cutaways to low-angle shots of a newsstand as the day's papers change from morning editions to afternoon versions, finally settling on a crumpled, waterlogged evening edition being swept up at night by a cleaner. And the hazy yet skillfully plotted geography of the area is central to the climactic car chase, a murky POV rumble through the streets illuminated only by headlights and muzzle flashes even as is moves in a clear trajectory around town.

"I tried to give you the feeling of mud sticking to your feet, and of fog obscuring your sight," Renoir later said of the picture. La Nuit du Carrefour certainly feels mucky and grim, and more than a little absurd; it's no wonder that the one song that the local, accordion-toting musician can play is a tune he learned at the circus. "It's not safe anywhere," says the mechanic Oscar near the start of the film, a preemptive rejoinder to the xenophobia about to set upon the desolate area. By the end of the film, the sense of doom that confirms that assessment stems less from the revelation of mass culpability than the suffocating fog closing in on the crossroads. By that point, the rolling mist seems less condensed humidity than mustard gas fumes. Even the final show of humanity and love only truly serves to lock these people within this poison cloud.

Boudu Saved from Drowning (Jean Renoir, 1932)

Jean Renoir's satiric gutting of René Fauchois' play is one of the director's finest works, a biting work whose ambiguous target (does it ultimately side with individualist anarchy or bourgeois liberalism?) is less the result of an unfocused screenplay than an even-handed work of humanity. With roots in Herman Melville's similarly perplexing short story "Bartleby the Scrivener," Boudu Saved from Drowning is both an absurdist ode to rebellion and a sympathetic, even positive portrayal of goodness within the oblivious bourgeoisie.

The titular Boudu is the tramp qua tramps, played by that great beast Michel Simon of L'Atalante fame (or perhaps it's more accurate to say that Vigo's film later featured Simon of Boudu fame). Gigantic, scabrous, and stumbling in a way that suggests less habitual drunkenness than a body that infuses red blood cells with gin, Boudu is the Dionysian keeper of a park on the Seine. When his dog runs away, the distraught bum hurls himself off a bridge into the river, drawing a crowd of middle-class people who gasp and shriek but do nothing. It is up to a bourgeois man named Edouard Lestingois, who sees Boudu jump while mockingly watching the man through a telescope in his apartment, to run downstairs, across the street, down the bridge steps and finally, slowly leap to the man's rescue. Even the hero must maintain composure and be sure not to get all his nice clothes wet.

Grand Illusion

As I work my way through more and more classic films, I am continually humbled by those teenage delusions of what I thought I knew about cinema. Chief amongst the revelations is my personal discovery of Jean Renoir. Six months ago, I couldn't name you a single film of his or even tell you that he was a director, yet after watching his masterpiece Rules of the Game and now this I find myself introduced to a man assuredly enshrined within the top ten directors of all time. How could I have missed his work for so long? I knew there were obscure auteurs out there for me to uncover from now until I die, but to have missed such a universally celebrated filmmaker? Oh well, it's best not to dwell on such nonsense and instead let me talk about this marvelous picture.

Made in 1937, Grand Illusion is a dense web of plots, many of which contradict the others. It's a war film that isn't really a war film, it's set in World War I but really about World War II (which had yet to start) and it shows the softer side of military officers while simultaneously exposing even this humanity as a relic of social misconceptions about war. Though the titular illusion concerns the quaint aristocratic notion of the nobility and gentlemanly quality of war, it applies to many aspects of early 20th century Europe (such as the belief that WWI would be "the war to end all wars"), as well as our preconceptions to the direction of the plot.

The film opens on Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim), a aristocratic German pilot, who invites two French officers he shot down, Captain de Boeldieu and Lieutenant Maréchal, to lunch before sending them to a prisoner of war camp. Rauffenstein and Boeldieu have mutual acquaintances and exchange pleasantries, and soon Rauffenstein sends his captured foe care packages full of delicacies to keep him comfortable in the POW camp.

Boeldieu and Maréchal meet some old friends in the camp, and befriend Rosenthal, a nouveau-riche French Jew. In a subtle yet open attempt to dispel stereotypes (especially in the face of increasingly anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda), Renoir makes Rosenthal the kindest of the rich prisoners; he shares his own parcels amongst the "commoners" to ensure that no one starves.

Though rich, Rosenthal fits better with the Maréchal and the other commoners. Though they all have different jobs and lives, these men share enough experiences to form a kinship with one another. Boeldieu, on the other hand, regards himself as above the various camps the Germans place their prisoners, and hatches an escape plot seemingly because it's just something to do.

Boeldieu displays a streak of unlikely heroism in the escape; he plays the flute and dances about to distract the guards, giving the others time to escape. Eventually he makes it out of the camp with all of the guards after him and forces a reluctant Rauffenstein to shoot him.

The resulting scene, likely the film's most famous, is both touching and telling. Rauffenstein visits the dying Boeldieu in the hospital and apologizes for shooting him. After speaking a bit, Boeldieu tells his unlikely friend "For a commoner, dying in a war is a tragedy. But for you and me, it's a good way out," and then mentions that he pities Rauffenstein for what life has in store for him after the war. Finally we understand why the French aristocrat gave his life for the commoners: he knew that this war would forever alter the social climate, that people would no longer buy into the outdated notion that war contained a certain nobility and that it served as a useful political tool. He committed suicide by cop out of fear of the new era.

All throughout the film Renoir explores his themes not only through the words of the characters but through his vibrant direction. In one extended long take, his camera lightly dances over Rauffenstein's personal effects before settling on the man himself, only to continue tracking throughout the room. In the smooth scan over Rauffenstein's odds and ends, we get a clearer picture of the man than any forced expositional background could convey (the most telling and amusing of which is a pistol resting on a copy of Casanova, signalling him to be both a lover and a fighter). In another scene, Renoir shows another aspect of his examination of racism and anti-Semitism when he focuses on an African prisoner in one of the camps. The other men work alongside him and seem to accept him but never speak to him, even when he attempts to make conversation.

The final moments of the film are perhaps a bit too upbeat. In their trek out of Germany, Maréchal falls in love with a German farm girl, and in the end he and Rosenthal make it out of Germany into Switzerland. However, just because a film is bleak does not mean it requires a bleak ending, and the character of Elsa opens up yet another avenue in which to subvert conventions. Left widowed and without brothers by French soldiers, she nevertheless welcomes these escaped POWs into her home, feeds them and keeps them safe. She represents the final stage of war, where grief and rage bleed out and leave emptiness behind.

Though it may not be on the level of his 1939 satire Rules of the Game, Grand Illusion is no less groundbreaking, subversive and utterly brilliant. Even ignoring its multiple directorial flourishes, Renoir crafted one of the most original and influential films ever made, a searing indictment of war and the rich who treat it like a game. Like Rules of the Game, it places all of this social commentary into an endlessly watchable treat. If you haven't seen it, you're missing out.

The Rules of the Game

According to many, 1939 was the greatest year in film history. With two Technicolor epics (Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, two defining John Ford classics (Young Abraham Lincoln and Stagecoach, which gave John Wayne his breakout role) and a number of less-remembered but well-regarded movies, it certainly stacks up better than just about any single year short of your pick of the mid-'70s. But the truly defining film of the year came not from Hollywood but from France, on the eve of plunging into war with Germany. The Rules of the Game, made a full three years before Citizen Kane, perfected a number of innovations that Welles would lovingly adopt (and outright steal) for his own masterpiece.

Set in a lavish, rural chateau in which a number of French aristocrats gather for a weekend getaway, The Rules of the Game points perilously to the downfall of French society that was mere months away. Naturally, Renoir could not have anticipated how swiftly the Nazis would come for his country, so he seeks to dismantle the system himself, through some of the most biting satire ever put to film.

The influence of Renoir on director Robert Altman's style is visible from the start: Renoir works with long takes that zoom in and out of conversations winding through separate groups and picking up the overlapping dialogue of each. This style prevents any one character from taking precedence, though a small group do stand out against the rest. André, a pilot, just flew over the Atlantic, and is devastated when his lover does not meet him at the airfield. His friend Octave (played by Renoir himself) takes him to a weekend retreat at the house of Robert de la Chesnaye. Robert's gamekeeper is named Schumacher, whose wife serves as a maid in the chateau.

In the center of all this is Christine, André's former lover and now wife to Robert. Everyone lusts after her like some sort of French art-house version of There's Something About Mary: André still loves her, Octave secretly has feelings for her, Robert perhaps doesn't but certainly views her as his. Even Schumacher's wife, Lisette, is fiercely loyal and loving to Christine; coupled with her disinterest in her husband, one wonders just how deeply she loves her friend.

Through the relaxing activities of these characters Renoir exposes the clueless decadence of the aristocracy. In one memorable scene, the twenty or so guest head out into the fields and promptly shoot every little creature that wanders into their field of view. Animal lovers beware, this is pretty tough stuff. Renoir clearly wants us to see that these aloof fools not only have lost their innocence but actively destroy the purity of nature wherever they go.

The titular game refers to the rampant seduction going on in the retreat. The 'rules' allow the men to take mistresses provided they keep it quiet and treat their wives with respect. Naturally, the women are game pieces, not players themselves. By the end of the thing you get the feeling everyone has screwed everyone else except their own spouses.

The stories of the various characters play out under Renoir's masterful direction, which uses deep focus lenses to show characters in the foreground and the background advancing their plots. Long takes pull every nuance from an actor's face and body language, and each person and object is meticulously placed for maximum aesthetic effect. His style of ambling through various conversations gives the narrative and ebb and flow that can lead you in one direction until it floors you with a change and even move the story along in moments that might seem tangential on a surface level. It's almost too subtle for satire.

But there's a savage humor throughout; Renoir does not so much go for gags and ruthlessly and relentlessly tear the veil down on upper class life; I don't think a director would so clearly loathe his characters until Neil LaBute made In the Company of Men nearly 60 years later. The final segments ram home the complete corruption and delusion of the aristocracy; not even a terrible tragedy can ruin the party. The shocking violence of its humor reminds me of the Coen brothers, as the climactic death of Rules reminds me more than a little of the sudden (and darkly hilarious) deaths that make up so much of their work.

Renoir's flawless direction, combined with his rambling narrative and his unusually deep (for a satire) characterizations make The Rules of the Game stand head and shoulders above just about every other film I've ever seen. Renoir's deep focus photography gives the picture a classical detachment that clashes vividly with the intimate movement of the camera, a dichotomy that makes the movie as engaging as it was the day it came out even as you want to sit back and admire the overall impact of it. The only cinematic satire I can think of that even approaches the vicious, raucous level of this stone-cold classic is Dr. Strangelove, but not even the great Kubrick shot his film as well as Renoir did his. If Citizen Kane is to be acknowledged as the pinnacle of cinema, then this equally influential masterpiece must never be far behind.