La Chienne is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 film by director Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...

. It is the second sound film

Sound film

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...

 by the director and the twelfth of his career.

The literal English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 translation of the film's title is "The Bitch", although the movie was never released under this title. It is often referred to in English as Isn't Life a Bitch?

It was remade by Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang

Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...

 in the United States as Scarlet Street

Scarlet Street

Scarlet Street is a 1945 American film noir directed by Fritz Lang and based on the French novel La Chienne by Georges de La Fouchardière, that previously had been dramatized on stage by André Mouëzy-Éon, and cinematically as La Chienne by director Jean Renoir.The principal actors Edward G...

(1945).

Plot

Maurice (Michel Simon

Michel Simon

Michel Simon , was a Swiss actor. The actor François Simon is his son.-Early years:...

) is a married cashier who meets Lulu (Janie Marèze

Janie Marèse

Janie Marèse was a French actress who appeared in four shorts and three feature-length films, most notably Jean Renoir's second sound film La Chienne, before her premature death, aged 23, in a road accident.- Career :Marèse made her first screen appearance in a 1929...

), a streetwalker. Their chance meeting results in Maurice falling in love with Lulu. She, however, is in love with her boyfriend-pimp, Dédé (Georges Flamant). Together, Dédé and Lulu plot ways to get Maurice to give cash to Lulu, mostly at the urging of Dédé.

Cast (in credits order)

• Michel Simon
  Michel Simon
  Michel Simon , was a Swiss actor. The actor François Simon is his son.-Early years:...
  
   as Maurice Legrand
• Janie Marèze
  Janie Marèse
  Janie Marèse was a French actress who appeared in four shorts and three feature-length films, most notably Jean Renoir's second sound film La Chienne, before her premature death, aged 23, in a road accident.- Career :Marèse made her first screen appearance in a 1929...
  
   as Lucienne 'Lulu' Pelletier
• Georges Flamant as Andre 'Dede' Govain
• Magdeleine Berubet as Adele Legrand
• Roger Gaillard as Alexis Godard
• Jean Gehret
  Jean Gehret
  Jean Gehret was an actor and director, appearing in a few films directed by Jean Renoir, including La Chienne and Madame Bovary .-External links:...
  
  as Dugodet
• Alexandre Rignault as Langelard
• Lucien Mancini as Wallstein
• Marcel Courmes as Colonel
• Max Dalban as Bonnard
• Henri Guisol as Amedee
• Romain Bouquet as Henriot
• Pierre Desty as Gustave
• Jane Pierson as Concierge
• Christian Argentin as Examining Judge
• Sylvain Itkine as Dede's Lawyer
• Colette Borelli as Lily
• Mademoiselle Doryans as Yvonne