La Chienne, 1931
[The Bitch]
A
meek and unassuming office clerk, Maurice Legrand (Michel Simon),
declines an invitation from his goading co-workers to turn the evening's
dinner banquet festivities into a night of carousing, citing his need
to be home before his wife's preset midnight curfew. On the way home,
he encounters a physical altercation between a wanton young woman
named Lucienne Pelletier, nicknamed Lulu (Janie Marese), and her inebriated
lover, Dédé,
and instinctively comes to the aid of the abused woman, agreeing to
hire a taxicab in order to escort the couple home. Quick to note Legrand's
formal attire, Dédé,
in turn, instructs Lulu to seduce the unsuspecting old man in order
to extract money from him. Later in the evening, Legrand arrives home
and stumbles on a painting easel that he has precariously staged as
part of his makeshift studio in the cluttered apartment. He is immediately
castigated by his domineering wife, Adele (Magdeleine Bérubet),
for waking her from her sleep with his expensive and time-consuming
hobby, countering that her rugged and courageous first husband, Sergeant
Alexis Godard (Roger Gaillard) - a war casualty - would never have
undertaken such a dainty and fastidious pastime, and threatens to
sell his canvasses to a junk dealer. A month later, Lulu is seen providing
a tour through her comfortable new living accommodations, auspiciously
appointed with Legrand's banished paintings, to a friend named Yvonne
(Mlle Doryans) as she rationalizes her reluctant acceptance of the
unsavory proposition from her romantic benefactor - a renowned, but
married, artist. Dédé further magnifies the reputation
of Legrand's artwork when, unable to settle gambling debts, he uses
the unsigned paintings to raise money from an art gallery under the
pretense
of representing a fictitious international artist named Clara Wood,
adding Lulu's signature to fetch a better price. However, struggling
under the increasing financial burden of Lulu and Dédé's
parasitic existence and incessant demands to accelerate artwork production,
Legrand resorts to increasingly desperate measures in an attempt to
retain his façade of independence and mild-mannered respectability.
Jean Renoir creates
an incisive, provocative, and excoriating commentary on human behavior,
class structure, and social conduct in La
Chienne. Using repeated imagery of mirrors
and
reflections, Renoir visually underscores the self-entrapping pattern
of hypocrisy, treachery, and co-dependency inherent in exploitive
human relationships: Adele's flaunted placement of her earned monthly
dividends inside
a mirrored
wardrobe;
the shot
of
a shaving Legrand that pans to the image of the opened wardrobe
as he pilfers money; Legrand's painting of a self-portrait that
is
captured
through
his
studied reflection in front of a mirror. The characters'
interdependence is also revealed
through Legrand's
tolerated habitation in Adele's apartment that is paralleled in
his extramarital domestic arrangement
with Lulu, and is, in turn, repeated through episodes of Dédé's
financial demands of Lulu. From the jocular, argumentative,
and dichotomous Punch and Judy puppetry prologue that
alternately introduces the film as a serious
social
drama, a comedy of manners, and a slice-of-life observation,
La Chienne captures
the moral ambiguity and underlying inequity of culturally entrenched
social customs and rationalized human cruelty.
© Acquarello
2003. All rights reserved.
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A lone automobile arrives at an unassuming rural inn appropriately called the
Frontier Café and Hotel on a bucolic northern border town, as a cheerful
and genteel businessman named Meunier (Henri Guisol) provides a cursory orientation
of the couple's proximity to the border before bidding a sincere, fond farewell
to his two visibly exhausted, but genial passengers, Amédée Lange
(René Lefèvre) and Valentine (Florelle) who then promptly and unfussedly
check-in and quietly retire to their rented ground floor room. Soon, the residents'
often idle and innocuous tone of morning conversation is set abuzz by a young
man who notices a resemblance between the newly accommodated, mild-mannered stranger
in the next room and the police profile and composite provided by the town constable
earlier that day as he conducted door to door visits through all the local establishments
in order disseminate information and track informational leads on a wanted fugitive
named Lange. Noting the man's physical semblance to the police photograph, the
opinionated, independent-minded patrons - curiosity piqued - begin to discuss
the appropriate course of action for their seemingly notorious guest. It is a
spirited argument that is politely tempered when Valentine re-emerges from the
adjoining room, having overhead the relevant subject of deliberation, and decides
to join in the arguments by pleading her case against the town's denunciation
of Lang to the police. Proceeding in flashback, Valentine recounts Lange's former
life as a shy and fanciful aspiring cartoonist living vicariously through the
adventures of his invented hero, Arizona Jim, at a working class boarding house
while struggling to eke out a living as an illustrator for an opportunistic and
disreputable publisher named Batala (Jules Berry). 
The
opening scenes of 
Harriet
(Patricia Walters) is a pensive, awkward, and fanciful adolescent
growing up in Bengal near the banks of the river. The eldest child
of a jute factory manager (Esmond Knight), she spends most of her
days writing poetry in her diary and observing life pass by over the
garden walls with her attractive and self-confident friend, Valerie
(Adrienne Corri), and her levelheaded, yet superstitious governess,
Nan (Suprova Mukerjee). One day, the girls witness the arrival of
an intriguing young man at the home of their neighbor, Mr. John (Arthur
Shields), and decide to send a formal invitation to celebrate the
Hindu festival of lights as an excuse to meet him. Mr. John is a humble,
affable widower whose daughter Melanie (Radha) has recently graduated
from a Western school. Mr. John, an Anglo-Indian, was married to a
Hindu woman, and consequently, Melanie was born without caste. Now
an adult, Melanie struggles to reconcile her identity as she finds
herself on the periphery of both cultures, but belonging to neither.
The girls are eventually introduced to Mr. John's American cousin,
Captain John (Thomas E. Breen), a disabled war veteran who has run
away to India, unable to adjust to civilian life back home. Captain
John's attentiveness, charm, and soft-spoken vulnerability captivate
the young women, and soon, he becomes the unwitting object of their
affection, as they vie for his undivided attention and love.