Tag: 1931

La Chienne (1931)

Rating 4/4

When a good man commits a murder and a bad man who is innocent is hanged for it who is going to care and who should? Jean Renoir’s La Chienne may not answer these questions, but it does show us the consequences.

Renoir tells us in the film’s opening that the movie has no moral or message to give. Instead the movie simply shows us people being people. Renoir doesn’t believe in villains. He believes in humans who do bad things.

Maurice Legrand (Michel Simon) is an aspiring painter whose talents are unappreciated by his shrewish wife Adèle. She thinks he is wasting his time and her drawing room space with his hobby. Adèle frequently compares him negatively to her first husband who was killed in action. “A real man! A hero! A brave man who gave his life in 1914 for sluggards like you!,” she declares.
When the dead husband suddenly shows up very much alive Maurice lets him have her.
This leaves Maurice free to continue his love affair with the young Lulu (Janie Marèse) who is being prostituted by her boyfriend Dédé (Georges Flamant) to pay his debts. He’s greedy, abusive, and narcissistic. The very opposite of the kindly, but shy Maurice.
Lulu and Dédé hatch a scheme to sell Maurice’s paintings as her own. Maurice discovers this, but allows it to happen so she can use the money to live comfortably. Maurice’s naivete and Dédé’s greed end in tragedy for both of them.

The title of the film in English is “The Bitch” and Lulu more than earns it. Incapable of love or empathy she puts on a performance to gain Maurice’s affection and financially benefit from it. Lulu scoffs at his feelings, laughs at him, and is proud of her lack of scruples and two-facedness. Maurice kills her in a moment of passion and Dédé is hanged for the crime. The latter’s reputation as a scoundrel is set dead against him and Maurice finds himself able to live with himself afterward. The film ends with him an old man, a poor vagrant; but still as amiable and as kindly as he was before.

La Chienne, true to its promise that the movie contains no moral lesson, expresses no sense of outrage over what happens. The events happen as they do and the characters remain who they were. The audience is left to make their own judgments. The movie makes no comment.
Maurice is a man who got away with murder. He is also sweet-natured and is in no way an active menace to society. Dédé most certainly is. He’s a selfish bastard and perfectly capable of the crime he is accused of. Nevertheless he dies an innocent victim.
And Lulu is La Chienne. The bitch. She is manipulative, devoid of compassion, and embracing and proud of her duplicitousness. It gets her killed in the end, but the movie doesn’t tell us if she deserved it. It doesn’t tell us if the question of innocence or guilt even matters.
What Renoir’s film does tell us is that people do things, good and bad. And the consequences occur as they may, and not always in a way we deem fair.

La Chienne had the potential of making its title actress Janie Marèse a star in French cinema, but was sadly killed at the age of 23 in a car accident shortly after making the picture. Her co-star Georges Flamant was driving the car. After he survived the press vilified him and his career as an actor was almost destroyed. Adding to the tragedy, Michel Simon had fallen in love with her during production and never forgave Flamant or Renoir (whom he deemed partially responsible) for her death.

The aftermath of La Chienne’s production mirrored its theme. People did things as people often do and there were consequences. And as in the film, who was truly at fault remains unanswered.

Arrowsmith (1931)

Rating 2/4

Art is at its best when it isn’t rushed. Otherwise what could be great becomes merely mediocre. And that is precisely what happened to John Ford’s 1931 picture, Arrowsmith. It’s a sad what-could-have-been with fine acting and excellent cinematography mired by a fast pace that comes at the expense of the story.

Based on the Sinclair Lewis novel, Arrowsmith tells the story of an ambitious country doctor (Ronald Colman) who struggles to balance his career fighting infectious diseases with his marriage to his longsuffering wife, Leora (Helen Hayes). She’s spunky, enthusiastic, and charms him with her wit. He’s noble, eager, and humble in his dealings with European professionals who seek his talents fighting plague in the tropics.

We first meet Martin Arrowsmith studying up on Gray’s Anatomy being told that the best doctors need only that book, the Bible, and Shakespeare to be well-rounded in their craft. It’s silly advice and Arrowsmith never takes it in the movie and the character who says it to him never reappears again. He later (and by later I mean in the very next scene) introduces himself to eminent bacteriologist, Dr. Gottlieb (A. E. Anson) who tells him he won’t take him on as a research apprentice until he finishes school. Years later (once again in the very next scene) he is finished with school and ready to serve. He meets Leora, a young nurse scrubbing hospital floors as a punishment for smoking on the job. He asks her out on a date and at the restaurant he proposes to her. If this seems a bit hasty, don’t worry, in a few moments the dialogue reveals they have been already dating for a couple of years.
And here is where I started seeing the problem that persists throughout the whole picture. The film constantly jumps ahead in time with only hasty dialogue explaining the passage of time. When it is not simply confusing it is robbing the story of any dramatic tension.
His life with Leora is always saccharine and happy and every moment of strife or conflict; any obstacle and hurdle they encounter is immediately rectified and resolved by the very next scene. Sometimes even in the very same scene.

Martin declines Gottlieb’s offer to work under him as a researcher in New York because the salary is not enough to support him and his wife. He goes into the country to work as a practical physician: pulling children’s teeth, treating sore throats, and even developing a serum to cure sick cattle. I never saw him charge payment and whenever the subject is brought up he nobly says “don’t worry about it.” I really don’t know why he declined Gottlieb’s offer then.
After his wife miscarries and becomes unhappy in the country he takes his family to New York after all, where his talents as a bacteriologist lands him in the tropics to test out a serum for bubonic plague on the population. What follows is a poorly written third act that tries to tackle research ethics in a way that I found offensive. He is instructed to test the serum on a selection of the population and withhold it from the other half to test its effectiveness. This is profoundly illogical. All of these people are ill and withholding the serum would prove nothing. The ethical question of experimenting in this fashion is brought up and then dropped with a whimper. What we get instead is a diabolical white savior plot that tells us that those who were outraged by the experiment were just being unreasonable. When the “big bad city folk” who opposed the experiment show up at his camp to receive the serum themselves they are portrayed as sycophantic hypocrites who got scared and came running to our hero. This is some of the most reprehensible moralizing I have seen in a movie. Tacked on to this is an implied affair Martin has with a woman named Joyce (a sadly wasted performance by Myrna Loy) that comes out of seemingly nowhere and is easy to miss and misinterpret. We get a scene with Martin in beautifully shot low-key lighting smoking a cigarette outside her room. She changes into a nightgown before the scene cuts to black. Another leering glance from her and a brief parting scene at the end is all that is further developed from this.

I mentioned the lighting above because that is where Arrowsmith’s strengths lie. Low-key lighting, sihouettes, and shadow terrifically capture the characters’ moods in moments of doubt. Ray June’s cinematography here was nominated for an Academy Award and it is merited.
Another strong point is the acting. Helen Hayes is terrific in here. Portraying exuberance, wit, love, grief, and humor; I could see the woman Martin fell in love with. She did not win or even get nominated for her acting in this movie, but I cannot complain since she still won that year for her role in The Sin of Madelon Claudet anyway.

I would have appreciated Arrowsmith more had it not been for the pacing and plot. The third act is morally questionable and quick and convenient resolutions to every conflict take away any investment I could have had in the story.

I read somewhere that producer Samuel Goldwyn allowed director John Ford – best known for his work with John Wayne – to helm Arrowsmith on the condition that he not do any drinking during production. Apparently Ford deliberately rushed through making the film so he could get back to it. I hate to say this, but maybe Goldwyn should have let him have a cheat day.