Blu-ray Review: Jean Renoir’s Toni on the Criterion Collection

After the critical and commercial failure of his producer-compromised adaptation of Madame Bovary in 1934, Jean Renoir decided to put as much distance as possible between himself and the world of studio-bound Parisian filmmaking. Suffering what he later referred to as “an attack of realism,” he went to the south of France to shoot Toni on location near Marseille. As its opening titles inform us, the film is based on a crime of passion that had taken place recently among the community of immigrant laborers from Italy and Spain. Indeed, Toni opens and closes with a matched pair of shots that show a trainload of foreign workers arriving at the depot, eager for opportunities to make a better life for themselves. But the second time we see the scene, that sense of hopeful expectation is tinged with tragedy.

Toni imprints its documentary aesthetic—direct sound, outdoor locations—on material that betrays the heightened emotions and stock characters of the stage melodrama. Certainly, three sides of the incipient love quadrilateral constitute basic archetypes: possessive landlady Marie (Jenny Hélia), fiery flirt Josefa (Celia Montalván), and brutish quarry foreman Albert (Max Dalban). Only the eponymous hero (Charles Blavette) stands as a cypher at the center of the growing tumult: stolid, deferential to the point of withdrawal, unable even to make eye contact. Among Renoir’s gallery of rogues, Toni seems closest to Michel Simon’s endlessly put-upon Legrand in La Chienne, a film that shares with Toni not only a tendency toward location shooting, but also a narrative that centers on a crime passionnel.

All of this seems to conform with Renoir’s belief, as stated in one of the extras on this Criterion release, that how things happen is far more compelling than what happens. The “how” here comprises Renoir’s unerring eye for exquisite painterly shot compositions and penchant for restlessly roving camera movement. Individual images will tend to linger. A high-angle shot of Toni and his friend, Fernand (Édouard Delmont), framed against the immense drop to the quarry floor below is nothing short of astonishing. Even a simple track in on the impassive façade of a house can carry a poetic charge. And then there are those rustic details of the landscape—twisty tree branches, bumpy rolling terrain—that Renoir effortlessly incorporates into the blocking of his actors like so many readymade stage props.

It’s often stated that Renoir assembled a cast of nonprofessional actors for Toni, but this isn’t exactly the case. All of the principal cast members were “minor league” professionals. Charles Blavette, for instance, turns up again in Renoir’s Picnic on the Grass from 1956. And Max Dalban plays a small but memorably unctuous role in the aforementioned La Chienne. It’s true, though, that the minor characters were plucked from a pool of locals, and they contribute wonderfully authentic flourishes and filigrees by their very presence.

Renoir performs a delicate balancing act throughout the film. On the one hand, Toni makes a series of decisions that lead him ineluctably toward what Marie rightly describes as his “fate.” On the other, the narrative maintains a loose, almost improvisatory flavor. We consistently get the sense that things might turn out quite differently, if only the characters chose otherwise. Motivation, as always with Renoir, remains a secret wellspring. For his part, Albert no doubt richly deserves his inglorious end. But when it comes to the rest of the characters in Toni, we’re reminded of Renoir’s celebrated aphorism from his 1939 masterpiece The Rules of the Game: “The awful thing about life is this: Everyone has their reasons.”

Image/Sound

Absent from domestic DVD altogether, Toni makes its Blu-ray debut in a 4K restoration from Criterion that’s nothing short of revelatory. The full-frame image boasts remarkable clarity, especially when it comes to the fine details of clothing patterns and landscape features. Black levels are rich and entirely uncrushed. Because the restoration relied in part on a theatrical print, there’s the occasional issue of skipped frames, but it’s never too terribly distracting. And Renoir’s use of direct sound during location shooting means the dialogue can get a little muddled sometimes (obviated, of course, by the subtitles). But the LPCM mono track does well by Paul Bozzi’s guitar-strumming ballads of love and loss.

Extras

In a brief introduction to the film from 1961, Renoir amusingly refers to Toni as “an attack of realism.” The feature-length episode of Cinéastes de notre temps from 1967 covers Renoir’s early years as a filmmaker. Filmed in conversation with Jacques Rivette and Janine Bazin, among others, the director speaks at length about his philosophical, aesthetic, and technical preoccupations. Their discussion is intercut with extensive clips from most of Renoir’s films from the 1926 silent Nana up to 1938’s La Bête Humaine. The video essay from scholar Christopher Faulkner delves into Toni’s formal and thematic elements, its connections with other Renoir films, and the true-crime story that inspired it.

Critics Phillip Lopate and Kent Jones play off each other with aplomb over the course of their eminently listenable commentary track. They mention Toni’s relative unavailability over the decades outside of repertory screenings and retrospectives, as well as its high critical standing within Renoir’s filmography. Lopate and Jones pay particular attention to the film’s “plasticity” and its “open air” painterly qualities. Finally, the illustrated fold-out booklet contains a typically perspicacious essay from critic Ginette Vincendeau about the film’s production history and its handling of gender stereotypes.

Overall

Making its domestic Blu-ray debut in a superb 4K restoration, Renoir’s film is an exquisite, idyllic ode to love and loss among the working classes.