Le Crime de Monsieur Lange

One of Renoir's most completely delightful movies (scripted by Jacques Prévert in the euphoria of the Popular Front days), a comedy-thriller-romance about employees of a publishing firm setting up a glorious collective when their lecherous and oppressive boss suddenly goes missing. Chaos sets in when he unexpectedly reappears to reap the fruit of their success, built on the imaginative efforts of a writer of Westerns who also finds a way out of the predicament by using a gun. Fantasy, politics and gentle naturalism combine to perfection, while Renoir's sympathies for his domestic revolutionaries are so infectious as to make the film genuinely uplifting.