(The Bitch); remade as Scarlet Street (1945)
France, 1931, 109 min, b&w
Dir Jean Renoir; Asst dir Pierre Prévert, Claude Heymann, Pierre Schwab, and Yves Allégret; Prod Braunberger-Richebé; Scr Renoir and André Girard, from the novel by Georges de la Fouchardière; Cinematog Théodore Sparkhul and Roger Hubert; Art dir Gabriel Scognamillo; Sound Marcel Courmes, Joseph de la Bretagne, and Denise Batcheff; Edit Marguerite Houllé-Renoir, Renoir, and Paul Fejos; Act Janie Marèse (Lulu), Michel Simon (Maurice Legrand), Georges Flamant (Dédé), Magdeleine Bérubet (Adèle Legrand), Colette Borelli, Doryane, Jane Pierson, Romain Bouquet, Max Dalban, Jean Dasté, Jean Gehret, and Jacques Becker.
The conception and production of this film are seriously contested. According to the authorial version, Renoir had since 1929 wanted to make this as his first sound film, because it accorded with his personal vision (as in Nana, 1927) and because he could see a perfect role in it for Michel Simon.43 The producers required Renoir to prove his commercial credentials, which he did by casually tossing off On purge bébé in under three weeks—a film that was profitable by week four. Having received approval to film, he cunningly concealed the script and the rushes from the producers to give himself a free hand; the latter were horrified when they finally saw the post-production screening, because they had expected a frivolous comedy. They banned him from the studio and had it reedited, but finally had to eat humble pie and invite him back. After the usual period of misunderstanding that any true work of art must experience, and which could have seen it disappear forever but for the courage of an eccentric entrepreneur, it proved a triumph.
According to the producers’ version, Roger Richebé read the novel and bought the rights, then bravely invited Renoir to direct it (“bravely” because Renoir had just directed two disastrously over-budget silent flops and was ostracized by the whole profession).44 Richebé and Georges de la Fouchardière both saw and approved the script, and both producers monitored every day’s rushes, so they were all the more horrified by the incompetence of the final edited version. When advised of their dissatisfaction, Renoir stormed out. Richebé had the film reedited by Paul Fejos, restoring a comprehensible story order and rhythm, and it is this version that proved a wild success.
Needless to say, despite its inherent improbability, it is the authorial version that is widely credited, though the editing of Renoir’s next film suggests there might be some truth in the producers’ account. Neither Renoir nor Fejos, however, are usually credited with the editing, but Marguerite Houllé, who in later years became Houllé-Renoir or simply Marguerite Renoir, thus bridging the gap between Renoir’s first wife, the actress Catherine Hessling, from whom he had separated in 1930, and the translator/secretary Dido Freire with whom he traveled to America in 1940 and whom he married in 1946.
The narrative of La Chienne is well-known: Legrand, a humble cashier with a shrewish wife, saves a prostitute from being beaten by her pimp, and establishes an apartment for her, only to discover she still loves and is sleeping with the pimp. Enraged, Legrand kills her and allows the pimp to be executed for the crime. As Noël Burch and Geneviève Sellier have rightly pointed out, there is nothing particularly estimable about what Renoir called his “pet topic”—the representation of women as either harridans or prostitutes.45 Moreover, the prostitute is devious and treacherous, so stabbing her to death is understandable, and he apparently deserves to get off scot free. His wife is a loud-mouthed shrew from whom he attempts to escape into the realm of art (he is an amateur painter). Her first husband, it turns out, has also escaped her, in his case by exploiting a wartime absence, and, when he turns up unexpectedly as a tramp, Legrand is able to use his presence as a pretext to himself disappear. Exchanging the French equivalent of high-fives, the two ex-husbands depart happily for the open road.
Based on a naturalist “slice of life” novel, which sought the truth of society in its grimmest and ugliest aspects, La Chienne is a central film in Renoir’s move from avant-garde experimentation toward a form of realism. One aspect of this realism is his growing respect for great actors, and his belief that they should be allowed room to develop the relevant character role, for only thus could the director hope to capture some authentic glimpse of social or psychological reality.46 The long take was one aspect of this practice of respecting the actor’s work (the average shot length of La Chienne is 21.2 seconds, whereas that of Clair’s 1931 films is 8.2 and 8.6 seconds, respectively; Duvivier’s is 5.9).47 Renoir’s long takes combine with great depth of field to establish that form of realism, involving several levels of action, for which André Bazin so praised Renoir.48 Moreover, the decision to shoot much of the film on location, in real streets and apartments, was a significant move at a time when sound recording still rendered that practice rare. Indeed, a principal claim to realist status is the film’s ambitious striving for an authentic complexity on the soundtrack. Dense Altmanesque layers of sound, both in the street scenes and the interiors, from which crucial fragments of conversation momentarily detach themselves, provide a sort of “aural depth of field,” while counterpointed songs and music support or comment ironically on the images. A sentimental street-singer intones, “O toi ma belle inconnue,” as Legrand kills Lulu; and as he steals his wife’s money, the little girl endlessly practicing the piano across the street sings a folksong, which returns later as a comment on the first husband. Clearly, despite his forcefully expressed distaste for sound as an inessential addition to the filmic medium, Renoir already intended to use it in as constructive a way as possible.
Critics on the whole admired the pitiless authenticity of the far from admirable central trio: “Jean Renoir has managed with an austere realism—immediate, even raw—to evoke the unforgettable characters of this infernal triangle—the petty bourgeois, rancorous yet sentimental; the ‘bitch’, a sensual woman without morals; and the third, her pimp, brutal, lazy and sardonic.”49 A final aspect of this aspiration toward realism was the use of Georges Flamant, reputedly a real-life pimp, in the latter role. During filming, in parallel with the plot, a rivalry developed between Flamant and Michel Simon for Janie Marèse’s favors, which Flamant won. As in the film, he bought a new car to court her but crashed it, killing Marèse. Simon’s biographer records his distress and anger.
La Chienne was Renoir’s great dramatic and financial success of the early 1930s, attracting the admiration of several influential critics, such as Jean-Georges Auriol, who nevertheless regretted the incoherence of the editing and the poor integration of the various narrative lines.50 The Catholic film weekly Choisir, on the other hand, approved town mayors who banned the screening of such obscene films as La Chienne.51 Fortunately for Renoir, audiences paid no attention but flocked to see it—over 400,000 in Paris alone—which helped tide Renoir over during a very difficult period in his career.
43. See, for instance, Renoir, Écrits, 56–57, and Loubier, Michel Simon, 86–93.
44. Richebé, Au-delà de l’écran, 74–88; Braunberger, Cinémamémoires.
45. Burch and Sellier, La Drôle de guerre des sexes, 86.
46. A view he often expressed, notably in Renoir, Renoir on Renoir, 73–77.
47. For the average shot length of early 1930s films, see O’Brien, Cinema’s Conversion to Sound, 191–196.
48. In various essays, collected as Bazin, Jean Renoir.
49. J. Sorel, quoted in Icart, La Révolution du parlant, 394.
50. See the translation of Auriol’s article in Abel, French Film Theory and Criticism, 2:86–89.
51. See Crisp, Classic French Cinema, 255–263, for excerpts from Choisir.