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.
Perspectives on Film 