Review of The Lower Depths

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