The landlords have no compassion for the tenants, they mockingly only stating that the tenants will be given a favorable standing in a future life for any good deeds done around the tenement. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. A gang of thieves utilizes a cross-road garage as the hideaway. Studios Éclair, Épinay-sur-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, France, Louka - le philosophe Kurosawa's version, however, was a most delightful surprise. During a Sunday trip into war-ravaged Tokyo, despairing Yuzo and optimistic Masako look for work and lodging, as well as affordable entertainments to pass the time. The Forgotten: Dimitri Kirsanoff's "Le crâneur"(1955), Did Liars Cheat Too Much? The only question for the buyer is do you place it next to Ikiru and Rashomon? Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. The inspector invites Natasha on a date and she cries, but he promises her a better life. The play was set in Russia, and we are lucky enough to have two masters who have created French and Japanese film adaptations. Renoir, working amidst the rise of Hitler and the Popular Front in France, had need to take license with the dark nature of Gorky's source material, softening its bleak outlook. While on a robbery job, Pepel meets The Baron, a disgraced nobleman, and the two strike up a friendship. Among them is a man who pines for a young woman but is stymied by her deceptive family. In the 1920s, the Provence is a magnet for immigrants seeking work in the quarries or in agriculture. Title: By some weird act of alchemy the two personalities, rendered in wildly different ways, mingle so pleasingly that we could scarcely ask for more.Jean Renoir has made a highly-detailed, richly-textured humanist film out of Gorky's play. The Lower Depths, Jean Renoir's 1936 French film, also based on the play. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. A vengeful young man marries the daughter of a corrupt industrialist in order to seek justice for his father's suicide. Add the first question. The acting in both is above average and in both the language is not a hinderance to enjoying the movies. Various tales in the lives of Tokyo slum dwellers, including a mentally deficient young man obsessed with driving his own commuter trolley. Qualifizierte Bestellungen werden kostenlos geliefert. The baron tells them it was a brawl and everyone is guilty. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. Trying to devise a way to bribe him, the landlord and his wife suggest her sister Natasha. Use up arrow (for mozilla firefox browser alt+up arrow) and down arrow (for mozilla firefox browser alt+down arrow) to review and enter to select. A Kurasuwa interpretation into a movie play in comparison to the French prewar interpretation. A bookseller saves a tramp from drowning and shelters him, but the tramp's odd behavior starts to wear everyone down. A surgeon gets syphilis from a patient when he cuts himself during an operation. This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. The story takes place in the outskirts of Paris in a poorhouse where Pépel (Jean Gabin), a thief, is planning a raiding. The Lower Depths (Kurosawa 1957) / The Lower Depths (Renoir 1936) - Criterion Collection. Starring an ensemble cast led by frequent collaborator Toshiro Mifune, the film is a Buddhist meditation on the human condition, yet also a poignant and comic investigation of the conflict between illusion and reality. Both works are, of course, based on Maxim Gorky’s play. At any rate this hardly matters - the film is so richly textured and rhythmically satisfying that we can forgive Renoir for indulging in a few theatrical flourishes. View production, box office, & company info. Creditors seize the baron's household furnishings. Three men of varying social standing - a viceroy, a bullfighter, and a soldier - vie for the affections of an actress in 18th-century Peru. Pépel tells Natasha she should leave with him, but she says she'll leave for a man with a job, not a thief like him. The daughter of a politically disgraced university professor struggles to find a place for herself in love and life, in the uncertain world of Japan leading into WWII. Galbraith IV, Stuart (2008). The tale will not win popularity contests with Western audiences-- the characters are all flawed, sad, poverty-stricken. The men fight and Pépel leads Natasha away as the inspector cries for help. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2011. This FAQ is empty. Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2004, How can you go wrong with Renoir and Kurosawa? Pépel jokes with the police until the baron arrives to identify him as a "dear friend". There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. The recent arrival of Kahei, a mysterious elderly man, affectionately referred to as Grandpa, who spins tales of the unknown, provides at least hope that there is a better life out there somewhere. A Japanese veteran, driven partially mad from the war, travels to the snowy island of Hokkaido where he soon enters a love triangle with his best friend and a disgraced woman. The acting overall is marvelous: Vladimir Sokoloff plays the old landlord Kostylev as a Dickensian creep; Suzy Prim brings a bitchy edge to the ambitious Vassilissa; and Junie Astor plays Natacha with a Cinderella-like down-trodden radiance. ©1997-2020 Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Inc. 122 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011, Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa transferred the setting of Maxim Gorky's play, Side #1 -- The Lower Depths (Les Bas-Fonds) (1936) - Jean Renoir, Submit your email address to receive Barnes & Noble offers & updates. Very enlightening and appreciation of his tottal film skills. The staging is strikingly assured from start to finish, the camera-work possessed of an under-stated expressiveness that is purely Renoir. The Lower Depths (どん底, Donzoko) is a 1957 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa, based on the 1902 play The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Vassilissa finds them speaking and is jealous. In medieval Japan, aging Rokubei, his younger wife of four years Osugi and her uncle run a tenement complex at the bottom of a cliff, the complex which from the naked eye at the top of the cliff looks like nothing more than a rubbish heap. Multiple Formats, Black & White, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Jean Gabin, Suzy Prim, Louis Jouvet, Jany Holt, Vladimir Sokoloff, Unqualified (DTS ES 6.1), Japanese (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), Akira Kurosawa, Charles Spaak, Hideo Oguni, Jacques Companéez, Jean Renoir, Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2014. LOWER DEPTHS (1936) by Jeam Renoir Lower Depths is an intricate story of poverty and those who fall into the deepest of socioeconomic despair based on the writer Maxim Gorky's play with the same name. DVD. The film treats the imprisoning hold of poverty; the disheartening odds of people rising from such social despair, and the ease in which those in the upper spheres of Society may descend. Renoir normally smooths over these rough-spots, but in The Lower Depths he seems to have left them in, perhaps intentionally - perhaps meaning to give the film a certain conventional sense of climax. 37 of 41 people found this review helpful. or next to Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion? Les Adams . You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Contemplating suicide, he finds his gun missing and confronts the thief Pépel (Gabin) who plans to rob him. Please try again. The setting was changed for the film from late 19th-century Russia to Edo -period Japan. Souls on the Road, a 1921 Japanese film directed by Minoru Murata based on the same play. A great commentary and history of the Japanese film project. With Jean Gabin, Suzy Prim, Louis Jouvet, Jany Holt. The tenants are a group of down-and-outers with some who operate on the far side of the law. The tenants are a group of down-and-outers with some who operate on the far side of the law. The DVD itself features two very nice transfers -- the Renoir is especially nice considering the age of the original film. Sie finden Rezensionen und Details zu einer vielseitigen Blu-ray- und DVD-Auswahl – neu und gebraucht. But there are hilarious comic moments, an intriguing pilgrim character (who actually takes the limelight from Mifune), and a tragic love story. An aging Japanese industrialist becomes so fearful of nuclear war that it begins to take a toll on his life and family. Choose an adventure below and discover your next favorite movie or TV show. Could Castle Save ABC Tuesday? In 19th-century Japan, a rough-tempered yet charitable town doctor trains a young intern. Click or Press Enter to view the items in your shopping bag or Press Tab to interact with the Shopping bag tooltip. The inspector and Natasha dine alone indoors while other couples dine outdoors as a band plays. They beat her and the whole neighborhood listens. Pépel believes only leaving with Natasha could save him from going to prison one day like his father before him. The Baron, on the other hand, moves like he's perpetually running to the bathroom, his bowels - and his entire soul - afflicted with a painful case of tightness. Meanwhile the thief seeks the love of a young woman, who is held emotionally captive by her slumlord family. The Lower Depths (Russian: На дне, Na dne, literally: 'At the bottom') is perhaps the best known of Maxim Gorky's plays. He is protected from arrest by his friends, but is torn by his desire for freedom outside. A drunken doctor with a hot temper and a violence-prone gangster with tuberculosis form a quicksilver bond. Use the HTML below. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. (1936). The Lower Depths He was not but he knew the brutal exsistance of poverty. The woman who reads romances recounts them to the baron and Natasha as if they were her own adventures. On the other side of the acting spectrum lies the extreme stylization of Louis Jouvet, who plays The Baron as a shambling collection of strained mannerisms. The winner of the Louis Delluc Prize as the most outstanding French photo-play of 1936, as selected by the Young Independent Critics of France (an organization and not a description.) The picture quality of both films is superb. LOWER DEPTHS perhaps isn't the place to start if you're completely unfamiliar with Kurosawa - but it still ranks as one of his great films, and definitely one of his most underrated.Based on a Maxim Gorky play (an earlier Jean Renoir film draws upon the same source material), LOWER DEPTHS seems a bit stagey at first, but Kurosawa manages to enliven it considerably - the performances are all top-notch, and the combination of skillful editing (straight cuts only here, but the usual Kurosawa multi-camera shooting method) and inventive set design (with diagonals and angles trapping characters, heighetning the intensity of the dialogue and acting) making this an unforgettable film to watch - easily as accomplished as the better known THRONE OF BLOOD from a little earlier. Title: In this classic adaptation of Emile Zola's novel, a tortured train engineer falls in love with a troubled married woman who has helped her husband commit a murder. In an epilogue, Vassilissa leaves the slum, Natasha brings Pépel home from prison, and the slum's strangest resident, a combination madman and drunkard called "the actor", commits suicide. Vassilissa persuades Natasha to serve the inspector tea, though Natasha has declared he disgusts her. The Lower Depths. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Directed by Jean Renoir. Jean Renoir's The Lower Depths: New high-definition digital transfer with restored image and sound; introduction by Jean Renoir; new essay by film scholar Alexander Sesonske, author of Jean Renoir: The French Films 1924-1939; new and improved subtitle translations. The family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The police inspector tells the landlord an inspection has been ordered. (as Saint-Iles). The fight ends with Kostylev dead, though no one appears responsible.