‘What we have done is shameful’: interrogating the relationship between France and its Algérie in Jean Renoir’s Le Bled (1929)

Abstract

Funded to commemorate the centenary of the conquest of Algeria, Le Bled is widely dismissed as propagandist fodder and remains among the most critically neglected of Renoir’s key works. This article argues that the film marks a landmark in the director’s output for three main reasons: first of all, Le Bled was Renoir’s first attempt to criticise contemporary bourgeois society, specifically the newest generation of French immigrants to Algeria. Secondly, Renoir’s class critique is articulated through a highly politicised usage of deep staging, a technique that would form a key aspect of the director’s mise en scène during the golden age of French cinema, most notably in La Chienne (1931), Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936) and La Règle du jeu (1939). Finally, Renoir’s depiction of the natural landscape as both a physical and social space foreshadows later works ranging from The Southerner (1945) to The River (1951). Key to this argument is a textual reading of Renoir’s exploitation of deep space, décor and costume design within a broader narrative framework of upper-class satire. Drawing on previously unpublished materials held at UCLA’s Jean Renoir archive, this article ultimately aims to re-evaluate Le Bled as a crucial turning point within the context of Renoir’s work.