Directed by:
Jean RenoirScreenplay:
Jean RenoirCinematography:
Theodor SparkuhlCast:
Michel Simon, Janie Marèse, Georges Flamant, Magdeleine Bérubet, Roger Gaillard, Jean Gehret, Alexandre Rignault, Lucien Mancini, Marcel Courmes, Max Dalban (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
Michel Simon cuts a tragic figure as an unhappily married cashier and amateur painter who becomes so smitten with a prostitute that he refuses to see the obvious: that she and her pimp boyfriend are taking advantage of him. Renoir's elegant compositions and camera movements carry this twisting narrative – a stinging commentary on class and sexual divisions – to an unforgettably ironic conclusion. Renoir films the story with flashes of spontaneous lyrical imagination, including close-ups with other characters crowding in at the edges, a conspiratorial dance scene done in one long take with daringly roughedged and hand-held camera work, a scene of shocking revelation done with the wry distance of a carefully choreographed shot through a window, and a sequence of violence that's filmed with a rare poetic delicacy that has nothing to do with fetishizing or aestheticizing that violence but, rather, quietly extracts from its horrors a prismatic range of the chaotically tangled and overstoked emotions that flow into and from it. (Viennale)
(more)Cast
Michel Simon
Switzerland
Best movies:
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
It Happened in Broad Daylight (1958)
The Two of Us (1967)
Janie Marèse
France
Best movies:
Isn't Life a Bitch? (1931)
Georges Flamant
Tunisia
Best movies:
The 400 Blows (1959)
Isn't Life a Bitch? (1931)
Magdeleine Bérubet
France
Best movies:
Come Dance with Me! (1959)
Three Murderesses (1959)
The Seven Deadly Sins (1961)
Roger Gaillard
France
Best movies:
Isn't Life a Bitch? (1931)
Night at the Crossroads (1932)
Jean Gehret
Switzerland
Best movies:
Isn't Life a Bitch? (1931)
Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)
Night at the Crossroads (1932)
Alexandre Rignault
France
Best movies:
Bibi Fricotin (1951)
Don Camillo monsignore ma non troppo (1961)
The Red and the Black (1954)
Lucien Mancini
Best movies:
Isn't Life a Bitch? (1931)
Marcel Courmes
Best movies:
Isn't Life a Bitch? (1931)
Max Dalban
France
Best movies:
Judgment of the God (1952)
The Impossible Mr. Pipelet (1955)
Panic (1946)
Henri Guisol
France
Best movies:
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936)
Joseph Balsamo (1973) (series)
Isn't Life a Bitch? (1931)
Romain Bouquet
Best movies:
The Story of the Fox (1930)
Isn't Life a Bitch? (1931)
Mille Doryans
Best movies:
Isn't Life a Bitch? (1931)
Viviane Romance
France
Best movies:
Panic (1946)
The Seven Deadly Sins (1952)
Any Number Can Win (1963)
Jane Pierson
Best movies:
Man About Town (1947)
Under the Roofs of Paris (1930)
Beauties of the Night (1952)
Sylvain Itkine
France
Best movies:
The Story of the Fox (1930)
Grand Illusion (1937)
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936)
Sara Nygren
Best movies:
Illusive Tracks (2003)
The Dog Trick (2002)
Isn't Life a Bitch? (1931)