Toni (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

See every Renoir film you can even the lesser ones. The imagery is great and the message is honest. A great film.

In the early 1930s, Toni, a young Italian labourer, arrives in France and finds work at a quarry. His landlady Marie takes a liking to him, but he is only interested in another woman, Josepha. When the latter is raped by Toni's thuggish foreman Albert, she must reject Toni and instead marry Albert. Toni has no option but to take Marie as his wife, although it is soon apparent that they are ill-matched. After attempting suicide, Marie becomes hostile towards Toni and drives him away. Josepha's marriage to Albert proves to be just as disastrous. Tired of being bullied and beaten, Josepha plans to run away with her cousin Gabi. The latter coerces Josepha into stealing Albert's money whilst he is asleep. Albert awakes before his wife can make her escape and takes his revenge by thrashing her with his belt. In the heat of the moment, Josepha picks up a gun and shoots her husband dead. Toni offers to dispose of the body, but in doing so he inculpates himself as Albert's killer.This bleak tragedy was a real finding in the France of the early Thirties, but yet, the dramatic social impact that provoked resounded and reverberated to suchan extent that could be said so much that is very far from being a mere chance that the young Italian filmmaker by then, Luchino Visconti had undertaken the project in 1942 from James Cain's novel Obsession, a film that to my mind is the pioneer film of this famous genre.For all movie buffs this is a film you cannot afford to watch.