General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Crime of Monsieur Lange

The Crime of Monsieur Lange (French: Le Crime de Monsieur Lange) is a 1936 French drama directed by Jean Renoir, written by Jacques Prévert and Renoir from an idea by Jean Castanier, in which the employees of a crooked publisher form a cooperative after his presumed death, and Amédée Lange shoots Batala when he returns to reclaim the business¹^•¹². It was released in Paris on 24 January 1936, the year of the Popular Front, and is regarded as one of Renoir's most politically engaged works¹^•².

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Jean Renoir; screenplay by Jacques Prévert and Jean Renoir from an idea by Jean Castanier¹
Production	Films Obéron, produced by André Halley des Fontaines; filmed October–November 1935 at Billancourt studios with exteriors in and around Paris¹^•³
Release	24 January 1936, Paris¹
Principal cast	Jules Berry (Batala), René Lefèvre (Amédée Lange), Florelle (Valentine), Nadia Sibirskaïa (Estelle), Sylvia Bataille (Édith)²
Key crew	Cinematography Jean Bachelet; editing Marguerite Renoir; music Jean Wiener and Joseph Kosma³^•⁴
Format	Black-and-white 35 mm, aspect ratio 1.37:1; running time reported as 83–84 minutes¹^•⁵
Restoration	Restored in 4K by Studiocanal at the L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, Bologna; restoration premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2017⁵

Spoilers

Story

Amédée Lange, an employee of the publisher Batala, writes adventure novels for him. Bankrupt and fleeing his creditors, Batala disappears; after his train has an accident, everyone believes him dead. To save the firm, the employees decide to run it as a cooperative, built around Lange's hit Western serial "Arizona Jim". Lange falls in love with the laundress Valentine, Batala's former mistress. Batala reappears on Christmas Eve disguised as a priest, determined to take the business back. Confronted with his behavior, Lange shoots him with a revolver and flees to Belgium with Valentine²^•⁵.

The film opens at the border, where Lange and Valentine take refuge in a small hotel and Valentine asks the patrons to hear the whole story before calling the police, so that the main narrative is told as a justification of the killing⁴. A scholarly account notes that the film's recourse to this context of justification, in which the narrative effectively acquits Lange of his crime, reinforces its notion of communitarianism⁶.

Production

The film was produced by Films Obéron with André Halley des Fontaines as producer. The crew included the cinematographer Jean Bachelet, the editor Marguerite Renoir, the production designers Jean Castanier and Robert Gys, and the composers Jean Wiener and Joseph Kosma; the still photographer was Dora Maar¹^•³. It was the only Renoir–Prévert collaboration³.

The central location is the courtyard of a residential complex that also houses the publisher's offices. Charles, the concierge's son, is confined to bed after a bicycle accident and cannot look outside because a large billboard erected by Batala blocks his window; when Batala is believed killed in the train accident, the neighbors tear the board down, and the boy, and the spectators, suddenly gain an overlooking view of the courtyard⁷.

Political context and reception

The film was made during the early days of the Popular Front, the coalition of the French left that took office in 1936, and the Larousse film dictionary describes it as fully in the spirit of its time, that of social progress achieved in unanimous euphoria: everyone in the film except the swindler Batala embraces the workers' cooperative². Martin O'Shaughnessy, author of a monograph on Renoir, places it at the start of the radical upcurve in Renoir's Popular Front-era films, before the movement fragmented⁸.

For nearly three decades the film failed to gain the recognition it deserved, according to the Encyclopedia.com survey of its reception¹. The critics François Truffaut and André Bazin praised it highly; Bazin called it one of Renoir's most beautiful works and credited the collaboration with Prévert with some of the best dialogue of French pre-war cinema⁵. Jules Berry's performance as Batala is repeatedly singled out: Larousse calls it a number of genius and one of the summits of his career², and the Cinémathèque française notes that in his mouth Prévert's words are of absolute comical absurdity³.

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100% Tomatometer rating from 18 critics and an 80% audience score from more than 500 ratings⁹.

Later circulation

The 4K restoration by Studiocanal, carried out at the L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna, premiered at the 2017 New York Film Festival and received a limited US theatrical release through Rialto Pictures, grossing $35.6 thousand⁵^•⁹. The film is available on the Criterion Channel, which describes it as an exuberant ode to working-class solidarity combining comedy with thriller elements¹⁰. Its influence reaches later French cinema: Jean-Charles Tacchella's Escalier C (1985), about the daily life of a group of tenants in a block of flats, is described as a nod to the film¹¹.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026