Adapted from a Russian writer Maxim Gorky's novel the director Renoir makes a true gem, sadly scarcely known by cinephiles, this was fully restored in 2020, featuring as made in 1936 as the best movie of the years in France, Jean Gabin as a similar name Pepel as the great "Pepe le Moko" in same year, just coincidences.
This tragic-drama tells the story of a slum place where lives countless sad lives, one of them a pleasant thief Pepel (Jean Gabin) who used sell commodities of burglaries for the stingy landlord Kostylev (Sokoloff) whom his young wife Vassilissa (Suzy Prim) he has been an affair, one day he goes to work at night in a stately home of a Baron (Louis Jouvet) who caught him at the act, instead to call the police the flamboyant Baron says to Pepel that there's aren't any money due to it bankrupt, actually he entered in trouble by over gambling using stolen funds of the state department which he works.
Thus they drink all night long gambling and goofing off, there rises a friendship, next morning he invites the Baron for a visit where he living, it's doesn't take too long the broken Baron gets together with Pepel and all those poor suckers who shares their sorrows and pains among extreme shabbiness, the Pepel realizes that must change his way of life and find out that Vassilissa's young sister Natasha (Junie Astor) nourish a secret love from him which is pleasant by Pepel due Natasha to be demure and extremally beauty, so Pepel starts thinking in the another future.
Les Bas-fonds grants to us apprenticeship about the hidden humanity of the society of well-off, those invisible people around us which we pretend don't see, those lost souls stacked in tiny space hopeless, this is a message from this little gem picture that Jean Renoir grasped by your camera.
Thanks for reading.
Resume:
First watch: 2022 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.
This tragic-drama tells the story of a slum place where lives countless sad lives, one of them a pleasant thief Pepel (Jean Gabin) who used sell commodities of burglaries for the stingy landlord Kostylev (Sokoloff) whom his young wife Vassilissa (Suzy Prim) he has been an affair, one day he goes to work at night in a stately home of a Baron (Louis Jouvet) who caught him at the act, instead to call the police the flamboyant Baron says to Pepel that there's aren't any money due to it bankrupt, actually he entered in trouble by over gambling using stolen funds of the state department which he works.
Thus they drink all night long gambling and goofing off, there rises a friendship, next morning he invites the Baron for a visit where he living, it's doesn't take too long the broken Baron gets together with Pepel and all those poor suckers who shares their sorrows and pains among extreme shabbiness, the Pepel realizes that must change his way of life and find out that Vassilissa's young sister Natasha (Junie Astor) nourish a secret love from him which is pleasant by Pepel due Natasha to be demure and extremally beauty, so Pepel starts thinking in the another future.
Les Bas-fonds grants to us apprenticeship about the hidden humanity of the society of well-off, those invisible people around us which we pretend don't see, those lost souls stacked in tiny space hopeless, this is a message from this little gem picture that Jean Renoir grasped by your camera.
Thanks for reading.
Resume:
First watch: 2022 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.