La Chienne (1931)

Rating: 4 Stars (out of 4)

Dog's Day

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy La Chienne/A Day in the Country on VHS

Legendary French director Jean Renoir hunkered down and got serious for this, his first real masterpiece and his most toxic movie. It's the only time he dabbled in the "low" thriller genre.

The great Michel Simon stars as Legrand, an accountant and part-time painter saddled with a shrieking harpy of a wife. He "saves" a prostitute named Lucienne (Janie Mareze) from a beating, falls in love with her and rents her a secret apartment. But she still has a thing for her "boyfriend" (a.k.a her pimp) 'Dede' (Georges Flamant) and continues to see him on the side.

Dede cooks up a scheme to sell some of Legrand's paintings with Lucienne posing as the artist and signing Legrand's work. But Legrand catches on and murders her in cold blood with Dede to hang for it. The kick-in-the-pants ending has Legrand, now a tattered tramp living in the streets watching one of his paintings (a self-portrait no less) being sold for big dough.

Even with this pulp material, Renoir manages moments of great beauty and humanity. He shot real exteriors to match his set-bound interiors, opening up the feel of the film. One great shot has Legrand entering his love nest among a group of pedestrians, gathered to listen to a street musician. The camera moves up three stories to the top floor where we see Legrand strangling Lucienne. It moves back down in time to see Legrand exiting the building, noticed by no one, and the music continuing throughout.

The new La Chienne VHS tape from Kino also comes with Renoir's great short film, the 37-minute A Day in the Country (1936), based on Guy de Maupassant's story "Une partie de campagne." The film was supposedly intended to be included in a two-part feature film, but Renoir couldn't secure funding for the second half. Nevertheless, it's one of his most beautiful films, and one in which he purposely aped his father's painting style.

A family of dopey Parisians takes a picnic in the country. A couple of country boys conspire to seduce the beautiful daughter Henriette (Sylvia Bataille) and her mother (Jeanne Marken) by giving their respective significant others fishing poles and sending them off down the river. Henriette shares a passionate moment that haunts her the rest of her life, even after she marries the doofus from the city. Renoir weaves nature itself not just into the background, but between and within the characters and the story. (The city dwellers constantly marvel at it, talking about bugs and dirt as if they were miracles.)

La Chienne and A Day in the Country -- two masterpieces for the price of one. Try finding a deal like that on Renoir's father's work...

Starring: Michel Simon, Janie Mareze, Georges Flament, Jean Gehret
Written by: Jean Renoir, from the novel by Georges de la Fouchardiere
Directed by: Jean Renoir
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Language: French with English subtitles
Running Time: 85 minutes
Date: March 28, 2002