A Film Canon

Jean Renoir's first sound film draws on the same decline narrative as The Blue Angel and Pandora's Box, but invests it with a radical amorality that precludes sympathetic involvement, replacing the tragic dimension with tragicomedy, or even bathos. This is primarily a function of cinematography - and, more specifically, of Renoir's standard shot, which involves commencing a scene from a distance, gradually moving towards its ostensible subject, and fading just before a conventional framing of that subject has been established. Combined with a tendency to conclude affective exchanges just before they appear to have reached their full trajectory, this imbues everything with an ambiguous residue whose spatial corollary is the profound three-dimensionality of the mise-en-scene. Not only does this offer a stark point of contrast to the domestic and professional claustrophobia endured by the protagonist, it provides Renoir with the requisite vantage points (through windows, across streets) to ensure that the most potentially traumatic moments are undermined by a conspicuous disassociation of the camera from the action. This is all accompanied by an equally sophisticated engagement with sound, epitomised by Renoir's ability to transform the new awkwardness of silence into something more pregnant. It's also worth mentioning Michel Simon's establishment of one of the foundational personae of poetic realism, whose defining statement comes in Port Of Shadows: "I horrify you, but I horrify myself sometimes. Even so, I have to go on living."