Notable for the superb acting of Jean Gabin and Louis Jouvet, this is an adaptation of Maxim Gorky's drama about a group of social outcasts in nineteenth-century Moscow. No attempt is made in the film to recreate authentic Russian settings, but the spirit of the Gorky work is brilliantly achieved. According to Renoir: "I believe that by voluntarily leaving out the Russian gaudiness, the samovars, the balalaikas and gypsies of the false 'Russian' atmosphere that flourishes in the Montmartre cabarets I have better followed the ideas of Gorky....To me a film means a dispute. One has to take sides. Not politically, but morally. I have taken the side, in this film, of a class environment that is despised by all moralists, conservative and radical. I have tried to make a bitter and tender picture of the very soul of Gorky's 'poem on the loss of class.' Its nostalgia, its humor, its mocking jests."