Les Bas­fonds, un film de Jean Renoir (1936) d'après la pièce de Maxime Gorki

Abstract

The transition from Russian to French has made the movie The Lower Depths by Jean Renoir , an adaptation of a stage play into a strange hall of mirrors. The transposition demonstrates a substantial misconception of the Russian context. Maxim Gorky wrote Na Dne in 1902 , in the midst of a revolutionary ferment, while Renoir made his film in 1936 at the time of the victory of the leftwing Popular Front. In contrast to the hopelessness at the end of the play, the film finishes with an optimistic outlook, in the manner of Charlot . As in Chaplin’s Modern Times, we see the hero and his fiancée escape a miserable destiny and leave , hand in hand , to seek their happiness. The director asked the eminent author Evgenii Zamyatin to write the screenplay and assigned a central role to Vladimir Sokoloff, two Russians ; there is little of their Russian influence in the overall tone and the film stays remote from Russian reality. To satisfy the audience he called in two great stars of French cinema , Louis Jouvet and Jean Gabin. Taking the viewer’s subconscious back into a purely French context, the film is completely detached from Gorky's work.