Financed by public subscription, Renoir’s epic of the French Revolution features his brother Pierre as King Louis at one end of the social spectrum, while the main emphasis is on a group of ordinary men-turned-revolutionaries making their way from Marseilles to Paris. The film’s postulation of an alternative to nationalism versus monarchism is obviously closely related to the Popular Front period during which it was made. But this is also something that, along with Renoir’s sweeping emotional populism, tends to distance us from much of the film. However, even if you’re not particularly attuned to Renoir’s values (simplicity, nature, etc), he is always sufficiently shrewd in his analysis of the aristocracy for those sections of the film to have an air of authentic and haunting decadence.