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 The Lower Depths More at IMDbPro »Les bas-fonds (original title)

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13 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Renoir Does Gorky, 15 July 2005
Author: aliasanythingyouwant from United States

Jean Renoir's The Lower Depths is centered around a contrast in personalities. Jean Gabin, the great proletarian star, plays Pepel, a petty thief who remains jovial despite his restless desire to escape his deprived circumstances. While on a robbery job, Pepel meets The Baron, a disgraced nobleman, and the two strike up a friendship. These two men could not be more diametrically opposed, both in their social circumstances and their bearing. Pepel carries himself with the casual ease of a man who knows who he is, who's possessed of a basic trust in himself. The Baron, on the other hand, moves like he's perpetually running to the bathroom, his bowels - and his entire soul - afflicted with a painful case of tightness. The contrast between these two personalities, one open to life and the other closed off, is made all the more explicit by the differing acting styles of the two performers. No one was ever more natural than Gabin, with his understated charm and leonine presence. On the other side of the acting spectrum lies the extreme stylization of Louis Jouvet, who plays The Baron as a shambling collection of strained mannerisms. There's something elementally interesting about watching this clash of styles, this meeting of the naturalistic and the bizarrely theatrical. By some weird act of alchemy the two personalities, rendered in wildly different ways, mingle so pleasingly that we could scarcely ask for more.

Jean Renoir has made a highly-detailed, richly-textured humanist film out of Gorky's play. The story follows the various denizens of a lower-class boarding house lorded over by the slimy Kostylev, who's married to the jealous Vassilissa, who loves the restless Pepel, who's in love with Vassilissa's abused sister Natacha. The Baron, after losing his luxurious apartments over a money scandal, moves into the boarding-house, and alone among its inhabitants discovers bliss amidst the squalor. This might seem like a rather too glaringly pro-Socialist turn-of-events, the nobleman who becomes happy when he's brought low, but it works because Louis Jouvet is so subtly funny in the way he portrays The Baron's transformation. He makes The Baron seem a little bit teched, which helps to smooth out the character's ascent from suicidal desperation to grass-dozing, snail-fondling contentment. The acting overall is marvelous: Vladimir Sokoloff plays the old landlord Kostylev as a Dickensian creep; Suzy Prim brings a bitchy edge to the ambitious Vassilissa; and Junie Astor plays Natacha with a Cinderella-like down-trodden radiance. These characters find themselves embroiled in a scenario that's a bit more straight-forwardly melodramatic than in some of Renoir's other '30s films, but the plot barely matters what with all the physical detail and accomplished emoting - all orchestrated with a master's touch by Renoir, who tinges everything with a slightly sour irony. The staging is strikingly assured from start to finish, the camera-work possessed of an under-stated expressiveness that is purely Renoir. If the film falters anywhere compared to Renoir's other work it's in the slight sense of conventional melodramatic emphasis that creeps into some of the later scenes. The storytelling is sometimes casual and organic as in Renoir's masterpieces Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game, but there are other times when the plot-mechanics show through. Renoir normally smooths over these rough-spots, but in The Lower Depths he seems to have left them in, perhaps intentionally - perhaps meaning to give the film a certain conventional sense of climax. At any rate this hardly matters - the film is so richly textured and rhythmically satisfying that we can forgive Renoir for indulging in a few theatrical flourishes. This is one of the unquestioned classics of French poetic-realism.

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10 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
A grandly theatrical exercise by a great master, 26 July 2004
9/10
Author: patherto from Frostbite Falls, MN

Now that Criterion has released not one but two 'Lower Depth' features, one by Renoir, the other by Kurosawa, you have a double bill of masterpieces to look forward to. Renoir's contribution to this menage is a surprisingly buoyant one. Gabin and Jouvet dominate the film with their mano-a-mano discussions on life and freedom. Suzy Prim is properly bitchy as the woman scorned, although Junie Astor as her oppressed sister doesn't have it in her to elevate the scenes that she's in. The plot is almost completely different from Gorky's, yet the playwright read and publicly approved of the project. In Renoir's world there is always a way out for those who are kind and strive. There are doomed souls too, but their fates are laid out in a gentle, loving manner. This isn't the best Renoir film, but it reflects his lifelong humanism and warmth (and many depth-of-field shots for those mise-en-scene fanatics). Needless to day, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

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11 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Another excellent Renoir/Gabin Collaboration, 19 July 2004
Author: gkbazalo from Scottsdale, AZ

Jean Renoir's version of Gorky's Lower Depths is less faithful to the original than Kurosawa's film, but has its own charm. The film centers on Jean Gabin's character, the thief, and Louis Jouvet's character of the gambling baron, recently reduced to poverty through his embezzling and gambling losses. The scenes with Gabin and Jouvet together are tremendous, including their first meeting where Gabin is robbing Jouvet's mansion, later on lying in the summer grass recalling their past lives and their final parting. The other inhabitants of the flophouse, with a few exceptions, are not as delineated as in the Kurosawa version. This is not an ensemble acting piece like Kurosawa's, but very much a Gabin star vehicle. He and Jouvet really carry the film and make it one of Renoir's best. It's not in the same league as Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game, but very good. Four of 5 stars.

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6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Highly watchable!, 22 August 2006
Author: birthdaynoodle from garbanzo

The Criterion Collection offers two different film versions of "The Lower Depths": one made in 1936 by Jean Renoir and another one made in 1957 by Kurosawa. The two directors never worked together on either film. In fact, they only met once in their lives, many years later. Both films are based on Russian writer Maxim Gorky's 1902 play, which describes life in a miserable slum where most characters have lost all sense of hope. Renoir deals with this serious subject matter in a much more humorous and amusing way than Kurosawa, whose film is slower, decidedly somber and a lot more difficult to digest. While Renoir's work takes the viewer in an out of the slums, Kurosawa doesn't allow one to see beyond the wretchedness of the underworld. Both films are great, but it was probably Kurosawa's which left a more durable and deeper impression on me.

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9 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Strong drama, 27 July 1999
8/10
Author: Mario Bergeron from Cap-de-la-Madeleine

Very dark but strong drama, about a bunch of people with no faith and no hope. It's very cynical, but Jean Renoir's directions gives the movie a unique twist. Great acting by Jouvet and Gabin, and young Junie Astor.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Beautiful black and white, French version of Russian play, 18 September 2006
Author: deziree from United States

Watch this movie if only to see the soul of Jean Gabin as it plays across his face. Louis Jouvet as the Baron is a marvel of understatement, of course. Beautifully filmed, the world of black and white film is a pleasure, in this movie, to watch. The scenes and the plot remind us of life not so long ago, a life that was harsh and brutal and filled with class divisions, you were wealthy or you were wretched. It made me want to read the original play by Maxim Gorky. Apparently Yvgeny Zamyatin, a long forgotten but brilliant Russian writer, contributed to the screenplay as well. Jean Gabin is a great actor, few people recognize his marvelous talents.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Renoir and the classics, 25 August 2007
Author: dbdumonteil

It was not the first time Renoir had tackled a literary work:he had already transferred to the screen Zola's "Nana" and Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" .More masterpieces were to follow with Maupassant's "Une Partie de Campagne" -though unfinished,it's my favorite- and Zola's(again)"La Bete Humaine".

I do not think that "les Bas-Fonds" is in the same league as the four works I mention above.The problem lies in the fact that this is a Russian classic and that a French director cannot "feel" it like he does in a celebrated novel of his cultural heritage such as "Madame Bovary".Yes,the names are kept,and they pay in Roubles and Kopecks.It's not enough to create a Russian atmosphere .Renoir told that he wanted to Frenchify the novel :but Gabin and Jouvet ,although they are the creme de la creme of French actors of that era (and of all time) ,are not credible as Russians or Frenchified Russians.

Renoir's permanent features of the thirties are present.His anarchist mind ,present in such works as "La Chienne " and "Boudu Sauvé des Eaux" comes to the fore:the endings of "Boudu" and "Les Bas-Fonds" are similar ,when the two heroes hit the road,turning their back on a society they despise.Suzy Prim's Vassilissa is a distant relative of Lulu "La Chienne".

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Renoir gives Gorky's grim tale a new twist, 29 January 2006
Author: netwallah from The New Intangible College

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Renoir claims that Gorky approved his screenplay, and even recommended some lines, but Renoir's version is hardly bleak, leaving an avenue of escape open for the thief Pépél (Jean Gabin) and his beloved Natacha (Junie Astor). Gabin is magnetic here, and counterbalances the humorous Baron (Louis Jouvet), who starts off stiff but relaxes into a new-found whimsical poverty of the screwball comedy sort. The scorned mistress Vassilissa (Suzy Prim) practically sets fire to the scenery with her eye-flashes, and the Actor (Robert Le Vigan) is mournful and poetic and mad. Of all the company, the ingénue Astor is the weakest, except when she's allowing herself to be courted by the vast, smirking, Oliver-Hardy-gone-all-wrong Inspector (André Gabriello), when she gets charmingly whimsical, too. The ending, with Gabin and Astor going off down the road, is Chaplinesque. Oh, and Renoir said he wanted not to make a Russian film, so he set it in the French countryside and used mostly French actors. Best seen with the bleaker Kurosawa version (with a Japanese setting but more faithful to Gorky), widely available as a Criterion Collection 2-disk set

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Dry, amusing, dramatic, 15 June 2008
8/10
Author: funkyfry from Oakland CA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Jean Renoir takes us slumming -- everybody should know right off the bat that it'll be fun to be this miserable. There's always that touch of human spontaneity in his films, in his characters, that somehow feels really genuine. The city in his gaze feels truly alive. Jean Gabin in this film is sort of a French Cary Grant, comfortable and strangely admirable in any setting. Of course the centerpiece of the film in terms of its dark comedy is the scene where Gabin breaks into the house of the Baron (Louis Jouvet) to rob him but ends up being his drinking companion instead, and walks off with an equestrian trophy. Baron has lost all his money gambling, and so he says "take it, none of it is mine anyway). Then when the cops bring Pepel (Gabin) to justice, they're mortified by the Baron showing up to accost them for bothering their friend. Quite excellent.

Later the two share and idyllic moment on the grass by the side of the river, bringing back again memories of "Boudu" (and premonitions or inspiration for "The Fisher King"?). There is just so little time to get away from the crazy life of the city. Suzy Prim is a heartless pimp for her sister Natacha, who despairs of romance and a moneyed life at the same time.

Notably less oppressive and stagnant than the overly theatrical adaptation done by Kurosawa in Japan (both films are based on Gorky's play). I haven't seen the Kurosawa film in a while, but it strikes me that he sought to impress the audience with the stagnation of the characters' lives by making a stagnant film. Instead Renoir gives us the moments in these people's lives when they are in flux, when possibilities for change seem to hang heavy in the air, and thereby gives us the proper contrast to their dire circumstances without making a dire film.

Excellent performances from the cast, and Renoir's distinct visual sensibilities are on display in every frame.

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Pepel 'E Moko?, 3 May 2012
7/10
Author: writers_reign from London, England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This was the first of three collaborations between Jean Gabin and Jean Renoir in the mid-late thirties and there is a distinct link between this and Le Grande Illusion in the friendship across the classes as epitomised in both films by Gabin's prole and respectively Louis Jouvet's and Pierre Fresnay's aristocrat. Gabin was a star in all but name by 1936 when this was shot and it came more or less in the centre of his great fertile first period surrounded by La Bandera, La Belle Equipe, Pepe Le Moko, Quai des Brumes, Le Bete Humaine etc. Louis Jouvet was first and foremost a man of the theatre but he made several successful forays into film and also had a masterpiece (Feyder's La Kermesse heroique) behind him when he made this. Not unnaturally he and Gabin walk away with the piece despite a 'flashy' turn by Robert Le Vigan and solid support by Suzy Prim. Despite Russian names none of the principals is convincing as a Russian - and to be fair they don't try all that hard - but they do, nevertheless, weigh in with some top of the line acting and though the 'happy' ending clashes with Gorky's original it remains a fine movie.

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