Jean Renoir

Few filmmakers are more world renowned than Jean Renoir (b. 1894–d. 1979), who directed thirty-seven films in five countries and on three continents between 1924 and 1979. There are more than one hundred books and many hundreds of articles in numerous languages about Renoir’s life and career. His career can be divided into four stages: a silent period from 1924 to 1929, when he made nine films (one of which is lost), including Nana 1926; his most prolific years in France between 1931 and 1939 when he made fifteen films, among which are his most celebrated, La Chienne (1931), Toni (1936), Le Crime de M. Lange (1936), Partie de campagne/Day in the Country (1946) (1936, released 1946), La Grande Illusion/Grand Illusion (1937), La Bête humaine/The Human Beast (1938), and La Règle du jeu/The Rules of the Game (1939); an American period from 1941 to 1948 comprising five features and a short informational film, during which his best known work was The Southerner (1945); and, an international period from 1951 to 1969 of eight films made in India, Italy, Austria, and France, which saw the production of The River (1951), The Golden Coach (1953), and French Cancan (1955). The critical literature on Renoir’s life and career is vast. There are three biographies, scores of Interviews in various languages, and dozens of critical studies, including single-authored works and Edited Collections of essays, with more than twenty books to date on La Règle du jeu alone. In addition to the Screenplays for his films, most of which he wrote or co-wrote, Renoir was a prolific writer, with more than two hundred articles to his credit; an autobiography; a biography of his father, the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (b. 1841–d. 1919); four novels, and two plays. There are also two collections of his letters. Renoir was championed by Cahiers du cinéma from January 1952, and, under the influence of André Bazin, its young critics—among whom were François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, and Jacques Rivette—became staunch defenders and promoters of his films and career. Bazin and the Cahiers critics considered Renoir an exemplary auteur. However, they neglected the social dimension of Renoir’s work and skirted entirely his left-wing political activism during the 1930s. Major archival resources for students of Renoir are to be found at the Cinémathèque française in Paris and at the Special Collections Library at the University of California, Los Angeles. High-quality DVDs, many with informed commentaries and essays, exist for the major films.