Die Hündin (1931)
51KDie Hündin: Directed by Jean Renoir. With Michel Simon, Janie Marèse, Georges Flamant, Roger Gaillard. A woman and her pimp exploit a painter for money.
“With u0026quot;la chienneu0026quot;,French cinema enters the pathway to genius.During the thirties,it will be one of the best in the world.In those ancient times,it used to walk from strength to strength,encompassing the most phenomenal innovations the seventh art had ever known.Opening and closing his film with a puppet theater,Renoir predates Mankiewiczu0026#39;s u0026quot;Sleuthu0026quot; prologue(1972) and countless others by decades.Punch and Judy,what a derision!u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eRenoir has begun his wholesale massacre;the bourgeois society ,the army ,the justice are his main targets.M.Legrand,whose spouse is a shrew,keeps a mistress,Lulu,(la chienne=the bitch)who doesnu0026#39;t care a little bit about him and who has herself another man in her life ,Dédé.This dandy sponges her off.Legrand and Lulu are actually longing for tenderness,but a society in which money and respectability run rampant leaves them with no chance at all.Itu0026#39;s when he rebels against it that Legrand will find his way.His wife-shrew always compares him to his first hubby,a warrant officer killed in action during WW1?Never mind that,when the soldier comes back -he was actually prisoner in Germany-,Legrand gets rid of his missus!Now he thinks he can live with Lulu but he finds her in bed with her lover.Now Legrand will despise the rule of the game(thatu0026#39;s Renoiru0026#39;s 1939 movie title).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSPOILERS.SPOILERS.SPOILERS. Youu0026#39;ve got to follow the pack.Legrand kills Lulu (as the precedent user has pointed it out,the scene is a model of film noir murder:we see nothing of the crime but a knife;the camera stays in the street,focusing on a busker,playing a heartrending tune on her violin,only showing the windows of the house.)When Dédé is accused of the murder,Legrand will not surrender:he used to be a respectable man,and he knows that the society will always be siding with the u0026quot;moral u0026quot;,and that it will be happy to condemn a lazy pimp.Renoir allows himself the most immoral ending you can think of,and in 1931,at that! u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAt the end of the movie,Legrand,who now thoroughly refuses the golden rules,has become a tramp.Itu0026#39;s a tramp like this who will rise from the gutter to shake the bourgeois society in u0026quot;la chienneu0026quot; follow-up,u0026quot;Boudu sauvé des eauxu0026quot;(avoid the remakeu0026quot;down and out in Beverly Hillsu0026quot;).Itu0026#39;s no coincidence if Michel Simon plays Legrand and Boudu.These two works are Renoir at his most ferocious .”
