The Lower Depths

Jean Renoir’s fascinating adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s classic proletariat play softens the bleak social realism of the source material thanks to the director’s gently humanist, distinctly Gallic touch. Comedy and drama, love and death intertwine in a dingy flophouse where the petty thief Pépel (Jean Gabin) finds himself caught a love triangle with two sisters while striking up an improbable friendship with a nobleman (a wonderfully amusing Louis Jouvet) who soon falls on hard times himself.

Starring Jean Gabin, Suzy Prim, Louis Jouvet