Breaking the Circle: Le Crime de Monsieur Lange and the Contemporary Illegibility of the Radical Text

Abstract

This article approaches Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1935) in two related ways. Firstly, it shows how, responding to the entry of history into Renoir's frame, shot in "deep time", the film is structured, not by any sense of inevitability, but by a mise-en-scène of competing possibilities. Secondly, looking at important recent readings of the film, and drawing on Alain Badiou's writings, it asks whether we can still respond to truly radical texts without distancing ourselves from them or making them relativize their own positions, particularly in relation to political violence. Particular attention is paid to the murder sequence which, in its mise-en-scène of the tension between the circle and the line, condenses the film's sense of historical openness and uncertainty. Influential readings have tended to underscore how the sequence collectivizes the murder. My preference here is to emphasize how, when the hero escapes the camera's gaze, he steps into the space of the not already known.