Jean Renoir
b. September 15, 1894, Montmartre, Paris, France d. February 12, 1979, Beverly Hills California, U.S.A.
by James Leahy
James Leahy is a film historian, screenwriter, lecturer and actor, co- author of the screenplay of Ken McMullen's 1871. He has collaborated on other projects with Ken McMullen, Med Hondo and Nicholas Ray. He studied and taught film history and screenwriting at Northwestern University, Illinois, taught film history and theory at University College London, and has led workshops on these subjects in the U.K., Ghana and Bangladesh. He contributed to the 2000 School of Sound in Glasgow, and was a founding editor of the magazine Vertigo, as well as writing on film for Movie, Cahiers du Cinéma in English, Sight & Sound, the Monthly Film Bulletin, The Guardian, The Independent, the Chicago Daily News, PIX and Websters Microsoft Encarta. His book The Cinema of Joseph Losey was published in London and New York in 1967; he wrote a booklet about 1871 (London, Channel 4
Education, 1990) and has collaborated on such publications as Rediscovering the American Cinema (with Bill Routt, Illinois, 1970), After Empire: the New African Cinema (London, the Museum of the Moving Image, 1991). At other times in his life he's been a naval reservist, worked in both talcum powder and pork pie factories, as a chauffeur and a builders' labourer, and sold his blood to Cook County Hospital, the real-life original for ER' s County General.
First Movement: Polemic Renoir's films were underestimated when they first came out. They were unconventional, complex,
and so energetic and technically daring that few noticed their intricate structure. They were often
dismissed as rough, not fully achieved artistically. The generation that came to the cinema in the '60s and '70s (perhaps the richest and most diverse era in European cinema) recognised Renoir as an ancestor who had already made the kind of films they admired or were setting out to make themselves, and justly hailed them as masterpieces. Critic David Thomson recalls: "The Renoir retrospective at London's National Film Theatre in 1962 amounted to the clearest revelation of the nature of cinema that I have ever had." (1) For Alain Resnais La Règle du jeu (1939) "remains, I think, the single most overwhelming experience I have ever had in the cinema.” He continues:
When I first came out of the theatre, I remember, I just had to sit on the edge of the
pavement; I sat there for a good five minutes, and then I walked the streets of Paris
for a couple of hours. For me, everything had been turned upside down. All my ideas
about the cinema had been changed. Whilst I was actually watching the film, my
impressions were so strong physically that I thought that if this or that sequence were
to go on for one shot more, I would either burst into tears, or scream, or something.
Since then, of course, I've seen it at least fifteen times—like most filmmakers of my
generation. (2)
An unfortunate future result of this adulation, coming during the days when film was starting to
become academically and intellectually respectable, was that Renoir's films would ultimately
become enshrined as "classics," worthy objects for academic study, rather than sources of vital
emotional and intellectual experience. Now, in an era when producers, financiers and
commissioning editors exhibit the most abject conformity, and exciting work is locked up in a
ghetto far away from the mainstream lest it should spread infection, the wheel has come full circle.
Lip service is paid to Renoir as a master, but few encountering his work for the first time seem able
to recognise or appreciate its humour, passion or significance. We are all the poorer. Great art is
alive. It informs and generates passions: witness the response to the recent New York production of
Arturo Ui, a play by Renoir's friend Bertolt Brecht. La Règle du jeu, made on the eve of war to
illustrate the notion "We are dancing on a volcano," (3) has, sadly, as much or more to say about the
modern world as it said about the world of 1939, when it aroused such passions as to lead to its
being effectively booed off the screen, then banned by the censorship as "demoralizing". This was
clear even before 9/11, though before then the threat seemed more distant, and probably ecological.
Renoir's vision of the modern world, with its intrusive media reporters, in which "Everyone lies...,
drug company prospectuses, governments, the radio, the cinema, newspapers..." (4) and of a society
absorbed in its own conventions, hypocrisies and cover-ups, peopled by individuals who, though
often charming and likeable, have been made complacent by affluence, is as up-to-date, radical and
potentially disturbing as ever. It is, still, an "exact description of the bourgeois of our time." (5) In
1939 audiences were outraged. Now, they don't seem to notice, or care.
Octave (Renoir) and Marceau (Carette) going into "exile" at the end of La Règle du jeu
These days, people are likely to encounter
Renoir's work for the first time on television or
video rather than in the cinema. In these low
information, small screen formats, the energetic
ensemble acting characteristic of his films often
seems merely busy. The humour and much of the
richness of characterisation derive from interplay
between dialogue and the visual image (which
communicates gesture and movement). For an
anglophone audience, even when the subtitles
communicate the dialogue accurately, the pace of
the interaction and the impeccable timing of the
delivery of the lines are lost. Thus the wit that is a
key component of the hypnotic power of Jules
Berry as Batala (in Le Crime de Monsieur Lange
[1936]), one of the greatest performances in all cinema, is largely dissipated. Inadequate subtitling
has contributed to the misunderstandings that have devitalised Une Partle de campagne (1936). A
crucial early exchange is not translated. It establishes Henri (Georges Darnoux) and Rodolphe
(Jacques Brunius dit Borel) as regular visitors to the country inn around which the action occurs,
who can pack their bags and go elsewhere on their trips out of town. Without this knowledge,
modern viewers fail to recognise them as affluent men about town, despite other relevant snatches
of dialogue, and the fact that they are wearing the 19th-century equivalent of Lacoste T-shirts and
designer jeans, in contrast to Anatole (Paul Temps) and Monsieur Dufour (Gabriello), even more
uncomfortable in their Sunday best than those aspirants to gentility on whom they are modelled,
Laurel and Hardy. In Renoir's art, every line of dialogue, every action, every detail of dress, gesture,
posture and setting needs to be taken into account if story, theme and characterisation are not to be
misunderstood. This is particularly so as characters may joke about themselves—Henri telling
Henriette (Sylvia Bataille) he's in business with Rodolphe—or lie—Christine (Nora Grégor) in La
Règle du jeu convincing Geneviève (Mila Parély) she's known all along about the latter's affair with
her husband. Some viewers believe her, despite the fact that her voice is shrill with strain, and other
sequences clearly establish she has not been aware of the relationship until that afternoon.
One might hope that academics and film students would take a lead in appreciating, communicating
and attempting to emulate the richness of Renoir's art. But all too often they suffer from the
constraints indicated above, and bear the added burden of having to engage with certain films as an
academic duty. Moreover, there's the nature of the engagement the academy seems to require, with
films all too often stifled by the clammy embrace of a verbal discourse that has no place for the
discussion of beauty, poetry, passion or humour. Renoir has created many of the most memorable
and moving moments in the history of cinema, and these should be the first object of study, rather
than arguments about how “auteurists” have turned "a discontinuous body of work" into an oeuvre.
(6) Frankly, who gives a damn? Renoir's own vision of his authorial role, as reported by his long-
time collaborator, his "accomplice" and "companion on the road," the production designer Eugène
Lourié, reveals the irrelevance of such concerns: "Often Renoir compared the functions of a film
director with those of a chef in a restaurant. A chef can create great meals, but they are also the
result of his collaboration with his helpers, the meat chefs, the wine stewards, the saucemakers, and
the rest." (7) Great meals also require great ingredients, and these Renoir typically had little
difficulty in locating, drawing on classics of literature, theatre and painting. Sometimes these were
explicitly acknowledged, sometimes summoned from a storehouse of memories and observations
from life and friends, in a process of recall quite possibly outside the artist's conscious awareness.
Moreover, his successive partners provided him with a succession of concerns and themes. First
there was the non-naturalistic acting of his first wife, Catherine Hessling, contributing to the
stylization of his silent films, and his flirtation with avant garde aesthetics. Then came the red-
blooded socialism of his brilliant collaborator, editor Marguerite Houlé, often known as Marguerite
Renoir. Finally the religious feelings of his second wife Dido Freire. One source of the meaningfully
structured emotional confusions of La Règle du jeu may have been Renoir's movement away from
Marguerite and towards Dido. Others include drama, stretching at least from Beaumarchais to
Pirandello; French baroque music: "I wanted to film people whose movements were in tune with
that music," (8) material absorbed during the making of his previous film, an adaptation of Zola's La
Bête humaine (1938); the historical conjuncture, his responses to it, and those of his collaborators
including the emotional condition of his leading actress, Nora Grégor, a political refugee whose life
had fallen apart, and who was thus under great stress.
What makes Renoir's work unusual among
filmmakers, if not unique, is the diversity of the
materials he draws upon during the realization of
an individual project, and his ability to blend
these elements together so that each works on the
viewer but none obtrudes. Partly this is a result of
the pleasure his art generates: with so much to
perceive and enjoy there's little time and space for
the analysis of sources! However a serious
analysis of his art needs to draw attention to the
emotional impact and intensity of such moments
as that when the German patrol looms into frame
at the end of La Grande illusion (1937). One
experiences a numbing moment of shock as the
patrol starts to fire at the tiny figures of Maréchal
(Jean Gabin) and Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio)
plodding through the snow towards freedom; have
all their ingenuity, struggles and hardships been in
La Grande illusion: Maréchal (Jean Gabin) has abandoned Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) after indulging
in an anti-semitic tirade, leaving him, and human solidarity, temporarily alone on the edge of an abyss
vain? Then a gasp of relief at the order to ceasefire. Yet this in turn is tempered by a visual reminder
of the smallness of the escapers' achievement, diminished by the vastness of the landscape around
them, and of the futility of Maréchal's stated ambition (to make 1914-18 the war to end wars), to say
nothing of the arbitrary cause of their survival, an invisible man-made frontier. So little screen time,
so many meaningful emotional and thematic resonances! Just describing the action makes my eyes
fill with tears, first of anguish, then of relief.
And there are so many comparable moments, different but equally affecting. In La Règle du jeu, for
example, another instance of the strain communicated by Christine's voice, this time as she utters the
name "André Jurieu" in response to an enquiry about the identity of a new arrival at La Colinière.
She and the man who wants to be her lover hesitate rather than move to greet each other, separated
by the length of the hall. Then Octave (Jean Renoir), friend to both, arrives and breaks the space
between them as he and Christine move to embrace each other in greeting. A spatial and social
barrier is overcome, and Christine freed to move on to greet her potentially embarrassing guest. And
another moment, later, with Octave on the steps outside the chateau, carried away by his
impersonation of Christine's father, the great conductor Stiller; suddenly a cut slightly closer and to
a new angle as he freezes at the climax of his impersonation, then slumps in despair, remembering
his failure to fulfil his dreams, realizing he will never experience contact with an audience.
Later still, Octave again, when, harangued by the self-serving arguments of the maid Lisette
(Paulette Dubost), the sight of his face in the mirror convinces him he should give Christine up to
his younger friend, the heroic aviator André (Roland Toutain).
Then, in Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, the memorable passage, one of the most beautiful in all
cinema, poetic in its narrative and thematic condensation, which moves from Batala's abandonment
of his devoted secretary and lover Edith (Sylvia Bataille) to the seduction of Lange (René Lefèvre)
by Valentine (Florelle). Edith stands trying to smother her sobs with her handkerchief as the train
pulls out. A man, a sleazy parody of the wealthy businessman (Jacques Brunius) she has already
said disgusts her, spots her. The camera moves closer as he approaches. He's almost obscene: his
words are designed to console her but there's no comfort in his voice, whilst his face and movements
show he is gloating as he examines his prize. Precisely the kind of pimp Batala has suggested she
find for her future. Cut to a new angle, but still a close two-shot. The camera tracks before them as
they leave the station, Edith composing herself as she walks with grim determination towards her
future. It holds as the couple leave the frame, picking up a passing priest as music starts over. This
leads into a song about life on the streets whilst a push-off (an optical effect very similar to a wipe;
both newly made possible by the development of the optical printer) carries us from the station to
the exteriors of the courtyard which is the setting for most of the film's action. The camera pans to a
window, then moves inside to reveal Valentine as the singer, serenading Lange. Her song concludes,
and there's a cut closer and to a new angle as she moves closer to quiz him about his relationships.
Lange turns away from her, initially frozen in fear and isolation, a moment of
impotence, but he is quickly thawed by her attentions.
Memorable though such moments are, Renoir's cinema is not merely one of memorable moments.
Each is a contributing part of an elegant and intricate structure of representation. Ophuls' image of
the master of ceremonies and the stalled roundabout in La Ronde (1950) seems a simplistic
metaphor when juxtaposed with La Règle du jeu's use of mechanical imagery and a consideration of
Octave/Renoir's role in the mechanisms of the film. Who arranges Andre's invitation to La
Colinière? Octave. Whose playful jostling after the shoot changes the direction of Christine's gaze
through the spy-glass, causing her to witness the farewell kiss between her husband and Geneviève?
Octave's. We, who have heard the dialogue preceding the kiss, know its significance, but Christine,
with only visual evidence to judge by, understandably misinterprets what she sees. A moment of
intense narrative and dramatic import can also be read as a meditation upon the relation in the
cinema between narrative context, verbal information and the meaning conveyed by the visual
image. This is great art at its most forceful and complex.
Second Movement: Life and Films
Jean was the second son of Pierre-Auguste and Aline Renoir. His elder brother, Pierre, became a
distinguished theatre and cinema actor, the screen's first Maigret in Jean's adaptation of La Nuit du
carrefour (1932). He also appeared for his brother as Charles Bovary, and as Louis XVI in La
Marseillaise (1938). Their younger brother, Claude Renoir Senior ("Coco") was born in 1901 and
quickly relieved Jean of the often uncongenial duties of acting as one of his father's principal
models. In the '30s he was an assistant director or producer on several of Jean's films. Pierre's son,
Claude Renoir Junior, became a distinguished cinematographer, also working on many of Jean's '30s
films, sometimes (on the lower budget projects) as director of photography, sometimes as an
assistant who, nevertheless, often had the important task of orchestrating his uncle's complex
camera-movements. Their collaboration recommenced when Jean returned to work in the old world
in the '50s.
RENOIR by RENOIR
"My father loved to paint my hair, and his
fondness for the golden ringlets which came
down to my shoulders filled me with despair.
At the age of six, and in spite of my trousers,
many people mistook me for a girl. Street
urchins ran jeering after me, calling me
'Mademoiselle' and asking me what I had
done with my skirt. I impatiently awaited the
day when I was to enter the College de
Sainte-Croix, where regulations required a
hairstyle more suited to middle-class ideals.
To my great disappointment my father
constantly postponed the date of my entry,
which for me signified the blissful shedding
of those locks...”
Before: Jean in 1900
"...On a morning like many another my father
announced that he was going to paint my portrait.
I protested, pretending that I had a sore leg, and to
prove it I limped ostentatiously. But my father was
determined to paint me, and the whole household,
not wishing him to be put off, tried to persuade me.
Suddenly Gabrielle had an idea. I had a camel
which I adored... a toy no bigger than my hand ...
Gabrielle said between two of my sobs: 'You ought
to make a coat for your camel. The weather's
getting cold and it will soon be winter. Your camel
simply must have a coat.' The idea delighted me. I
sat down in front of my father's easel and began
sewing." (9)
and After...
Jean in 1901
Paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Gabrielle was Jean's beloved nurse, a distant relative of his mother. She was sixteen when she joined
the household shortly before Jean's birth. It was she who took him to Guignol (the French equivalent
of Punch and Judy); years later she reminded him he was sometimes so excited when the curtain
went up that he wet his pants. She also introduced him to melodrama, which he adored, and tried
earlier to introduce him to the cinema, but at the age of two he found the experience terrifying, and
only started to enjoy films (particularly slapstick) at the age of nine, during screenings at school.
Gabrielle he associated with games, walks, piggy-back rides, his mother with discipline. He played
with lead soldiers, and read adventure stories.
In 1913, attracted by his love of uniforms and horses, he enlisted in the dragoons, and passed his
exams to become an officer the next year, just in time for World War I. He was severely wounded
by a sniper in 1915, and believes it was only a visit to the hospital by his mother that saved his life.
She was so vehement in her opposition to the amputation of his gangrenous leg that the authorities
changed his doctor and his treatment. He was to limp for the rest of his life. Aline, who had been
diagnosed as diabetic, fell into her last illness when she returned home, and Renoir believes it was
her exhausting trip to save him that killed her. Pierre also suffered a crippling wound (in the arm)
about the same time.
Renoir convalesced in Paris, mainly in an apartment rented by his father, who, though he was now
in a wheelchair as a result of his arthritis, had come to the capital to be near his two sons. Jean spent
much of his time watching his father paint, and, after the light had gone, talking, exchanging stories
and experiences. Then Jean signed on again, to return to action in the air force, first as an observer,
then, having fasted for a week to meet the requirements on weight, as a pilot. On leave in Paris
before being sent to train as a pilot, he, accompanied by Pierre, discovered the genius of "Charlot,"
Charlie Chaplin. Later, after a crash-landing had aggravated his wounds, he was withdrawn from
active service, and stationed in Paris, where he was able to catch up on all of Chaplin's films, and
became a passionate film fan.
Earlier, on leave at Les Collettes, near Cagnes-Sur-Mer on the Côte d'Azur, where his father had
spent his winters since purchasing the property in 1907, he met Andrée Heuchling, known
affectionately as Dedée, a teenage refugee from Alsace and the war. She had started modelling at
Nice, and called on Matisse, who was looking for a young model. He immediately recognised her as
the right physical type for Auguste Renoir, and suggested she visit him. Sources dispute whether she
modelled for the painter. Jean was sure she did, and mentions Les Grandes baigneuses (1918); his
biographer, Ronald Bergan, following the testimony of Dedée's best friend Alice Burpin, later
Figheira, is extremely dubious. What is certain is that she quickly became a member of the
household, and very close to Auguste Renoir, bandaging his arthritic hands (in his last years, his
brushes had to be strapped to his hands), carrying him from his bed to the chair where he painted,
and arguably inspiring his last "radiant" paintings, as well as the rest of the household, with her
gaiety and beauty. (10)
After the Armistice, Jean returned to Les Collettes, where he, Dedée and Claude started to work as
potters, Auguste having had a studio and an oven installed in an outhouse. Though he continued
painting till hours before his death, Auguste Renoir was in continual pain and declining health. He
died in December 1919. Dedée and Jean were married a few weeks later. They continued their work
in ceramics, even after moving closer to Paris, near the forest of Fontainebleau, following the birth
of their son Alain in October 1921. Gabrielle and her husband (the American painter Conrad Slade)
were living nearby, and soon Paul Cézanne Junior and his family joined them, buying a property
nearby.
Jean and Dedée went to the cinema nearly every day, and were particularly absorbed by American
films. However in 1923 Jean found a French film he admired, and which made him decide to
abandon pottery for the cinema. This was Le Brasier ardent (1923), co-directed by Russian émigrés
Ivan Mosjoukine—he of the experiments conducted by Kuleshov and Pudovkin and described by
the latter (11)—and Alexander Volkov. It combined respect for the actor with the technical effects
some directors were experimenting with in the desire to develop film language, including
superimposition and non-naturalistic sets.
He had already started documenting his wife's beauty in stills and home movies, so the idea she
should become a star like the American beauties whose work obsessed them seemed the logical next
step. Initially he planned only to provide finance for vehicles which would achieve this, but, unable
to find an appropriate screenplay, he wrote one himself—for Catherine—then another—for La Fille
de l'eau. This he again financed, and decided to direct himself (1925), having repeatedly interfered
with the work of the director of the first, Albert Dieudonné (1924).
Dedée had taken the name Catherine Hessling, as they thought it sounded American. In his
memoirs, Renoir pays tribute to her abilities as an actress, and describes how they worked together:
Catherine's acting was a form of mime. She had taken a great many dancing lessons
and her body possessed a professional suppleness. With her we had conceived a
mode of expressing the emotions which had more to do with dancing than with
cinema... I wanted films based photographically on sharp contrasts. I went so far as
to restrict Catherine's make-up to an extremely thick white base, with all other tints
rendered in black, including the pinks and reds... She became a kind of puppet—a
puppet of genius, be it said—entirely black and white. I thought: 'Since the cinema is
black and white, why photograph other colours?' (12)
In 1924, inspired by repeated viewings of Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim, 1921), he started to
draw on the traditions of French realism, and set up Nana (1926), a big-budget adaptation of the
novel by Emile Zola. This was shot in Germany at a time when German capital was becoming
increasingly important for French production. Some critics now regard this film as one of his
greatest, and certainly one of his most radical formally. Nevertheless, it was a commercial failure
which left him with debts that could only be paid by selling some of his father's paintings.
Subsequently Renoir found it necessary to earn a living from filmmaking. Although he was able to
direct some shorter, experimental projects (Charleston [1927], La Petite marchande d'allummettes
[1928]) he also found it necessary to take on several projects not much to his liking—Marquitta
(1927), a vehicle for his brother Pierre's second wife; Le Tournoi (1928), a medieval epic, which
does reveal an early interest in setting the action in depth and shooting action in front of a doorway
revealing an adjoining room; and most depressingly, Le Bled (1929), a hymn to France's colonial
penetration of Algeria. The latter was edited by Margaret Houlé, his future partner. His friend, the
independent producer Pierre Braunberger, also gave him the chance to direct a farce about military
conscripts. Tire au flanc (1928), based on a long-running stage success. On this, he worked with
Michel Simon for the first time.
Renoir's preference for combining friendship with collaboration was to serve him well throughout
his career. The fact that the large conglomerates had failed to establish dominance over production,
distribution and exhibition left a space for the contribution of independent producers and financiers.
Though the industry was often over-dependent on foreign capital, and new companies were often set
up which were small and under-capitalised, filmmakers nevertheless had a chance of finding a one-
off investor or group of investors willing to support an adventurous project. This allowed Renoir to
make several of his major films. After an extended period of inaction (apart from acting, and a trip
to Berlin, where he met Brecht) he was eventually given his first chance to direct sound films by
Braunberger, who had established a company through a merger with a regional distributor, Richebé.
Unlike many directors who had worked during the silent era, Renoir welcomed the coming of sound.
In his memoirs he suggests the voice is "the most direct expression of a human being's personality"
(13) and stresses the virtues of direct sound over dubbing and re-voicing, crediting here the influence
of Joseph de Bretagne, who was an assistant on the sound team on his first sound film On purge
bébé (1931; a free translation of the title would be Time for Baby's Laxative; he describes the film as
a kind of “examination” set on him before he could go on to more personal projects like La Chienne
the same year). De Bretagne "was to have a share in nearly all my future French productions and
played a large part in my film education." (14) Renoir had planned Catherine Hessling and Michel
Simon for the leading roles in La Chienne. His decision not to abandon the project when the studio
insisted on casting not his wife but an actress they had under contract caused the final breakdown of
his marriage.
In La Chienne, Renoir experimented with the use of
direct sound recorded on location. Facilities for re-
recording and sound-mixing were not available, so, like
many directors in the early days of sound, when within a
scene he wanted to cut between different camera-angles
and distances, he had to shoot with multiple cameras, all
synchronised to a single soundtrack. (15) The film's use
of location sound ensured that the individual drama was
played out within a social context that was clearly
articulated both aurally and visually (a vibrantly alive
Montmartre). In subsequent films, Renoir had sections of
the sets for the interiors of his protagonists' homes built
on location, and shot through doors or windows to link
the interior visually with the exterior. Lourié has written
about this aspect of their collaboration, (16) but examples
of the practice can be seen in several films he did not
design: Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932), Madame Bovary
(1933), Une Partie de campagne, La Marseillaise.
La Chienne was so controversial dramatically and
technically that Renoir was only able to save it from
Boudu sauvé des eaux: Boudu (Michel Simon) and Lestingois (Charles Granval)
Richebé, who had arranged for it to be re-edited, by appealing, at Braunberger's suggestion, to the
company's principal investor, a shoe manufacturer. His description of the situation led to the
decisive support of the latter's mistress. Once saved, however, the film still only found commercial
success as a result of the actions of a friendly cinema-owner, who devised an unorthodox publicity
campaign featuring descriptions of the film as "so horrifying... it was not suited to sensitive
viewers." (17)
Renoir then obtained private finance for the first-ever adaptation of one of Simenon's Maigret
novels, La Nuit du carrefour. Michel Simon and a friend financed Boudu sauvé des eaux. Simon had
played Boudu on the stage, and wanted to play him on screen. Like so many Renoir films, it took
three decades to find its audience; now it is one of the best loved films of its era.
Financial pressures led Renoir to take on Madame Bovary (he was suggested by his brother Pierre,
who was playing Charles Bovary). The final cut ran three hours; the producers wanted to release it
at that length, but the distributors insisted that it be cut down by about an hour. Renoir commented:
"Once cut the film seemed much longer than before." One who saw and admired Renoir's original
cut was Brecht, by then an exile from Nazism. (18)
Le Crime de Monsieur Lange: publisher Batala (Jules Berry) demands more blood from
his illustrator (Jean Dasté)
From the middle of the 1930s, as democracy
became threatened by the rise of fascism, Renoir's
concern with the spatial and social context of his
dramas acquired an explicitly political dimension.
Le Crime de Monsieur Lange was made in
collaboration with the Groupe Octobre, a left-
wing theatre group including the poet-dramatist
Jacques Prévert, who co-scripted from a story by
set-designer Jean Castanier. The film is built
around a group of characters living and/or
working around a central courtyard (Castanier's
story was called "Sur le cour"). They represent a
microcosm of society, and their lives and
consciousness are transformed when a co-
operative (involving both workers and capitalists)
replaces an exploitative and corrupt employer, Batala. Fascist rhetoric is deflated by being placed in
the mouth of this swindler. Lange himself changes from a depressed employee and unworldly
dreamer into a successful writer of pulp westerns in which his hero, Arizona Jim, is consistently on
the side of the down-trodden and exploited. His transformation evokes the 1930s politicization of
artists and intellectuals in opposition to fascism, including that of Renoir himself, responding as he
did to the influence of his new partner, Marguerite Houlé. She was from a working class
background, and a campaigner for female suffrage. The latter was only achieved in France
following the Liberation.
Le Crime de M. Lange is now admired for its technical and aesthetic ambitions: improvisation;
ensemble acting; staging in depth (though no true deep-focus); sweeping tracks and pans (though
none of these is the 360° pan described by Bazin, writing from memory in his sick bed a couple of
days before he died). In fact, it is Renoir's most Brechtian film, an extended lehrstück (teaching
play) disguised as a humanist comic melodrama. It exalts people's justice over the letter of the law,
and justifies murder in the defence of revolution. Aspects of this issue had already been explored by
Brecht in his lehrstücke; shortly after, W.H. Auden labelled such action "necessary murder."
Ironically, when released, Le Crime de M. Lange received more attention from the fascist periodical
L'Action française than from the Communist L'Humanité. The latter was more interested in the
forthcoming 1936 elections, and promoting screenings of Renoir's next project, the Party's campaign
film for these elections, La Vie est à nous, whose message was more in tune with the party line, less
radical.
Renoir supervised the shooting of La Vie est à nous, then wrote and recorded the French-language
commentary for Ciné-Liberté's release of The Spanish Earth (Terre d'Espagne, 1937), Joris Ivens'
documentary about life in the government-held areas during the Spanish Civil War. During this
period he, like many other filmmakers, was active in the campaigns for legislation to reform the film
industry organised by Ciné-Liberté. These intensified after the Popular Front government took
power in 1936. Policies proposed included ending the quota on imported films, and taxing them
instead, to support French production.
There was also a call for an immediate end to the film censorship, which had been responsible for
denying licenses authorizing public screenings of films such as Zéro de conduite (1933), Jean Vigo's
anarchist account of his schooldays, La Vie est à nous, which was shown widely, but only to
restricted audiences, and the Soviet classics. (The surrealist masterpiece L'Age d'or [1930], directed
by Luis Buñuel, had been banned by the Paris police under a different law, following riots in the
cinema where it was being screened).
Ironically, though the Popular Front never enacted any relevant legislation, ideas developed then
were adopted by the Vichy regime of Marshal Pétain, which came to power during the fall of France
and collapse of the Third Republic in 1940, and gave a model to systems of financial support for
independent filmmakers still in place today. These played an important role in the development of
the nouvelle vague.
1936 saw the start of Renoir's collaboration with
Jean Gabin, in France an increasingly important
star. This eventually made possible La Grande
illusion (1937), a production which, unlike most of
Renoir's films, was a success from its first release.
Gabin loved both the role he was to play and the
story, which grew out of the experiences of
Renoir's old World War I flying buddy, Colonel
Pinsard, and his many escapes from Prisoner of
War camps. Nevertheless it took three years to find
finance. Renoir asserts that it was only because the
financier, Rollmer, and his assistant, Albert
Pinkévitch, were not in the industry, and therefore
lacked its prejudices about what might be
successful, that they backed the film. Pinkévitch
La Règle du jeu: La Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio) and Octave (Renoir) in the Hôtel de la
Chesnaye, during the scene when the fatal invitation to Jurieu is agreed upon
often visited the set during shooting, and his wit and anecdotes played a major role in the
development of the character of the wealthy Jewish officer Rosenthal, and thus, one can suggest, in
that of Christine's husband La Chesnaye in La Règle du jeu as well.
La Grande illusion went on to have a special prize created for it at the Venice Festival (Mussolini
apparently liked it; however, the authorities at Venice did not wish to offend the Nazis by giving a
major prize to an anti-war, internationalist film). It was voted best foreign film at the New York
World's Fair, and caused President Roosevelt, after a private screening at the White House, to
declare: "All the democracies of the world must see this film." (19) It remains Renoir's best-known
and most popular film. It is a plea, as much to the reactionary forces inside France as to those
outside, on behalf of the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, and against anti-semitism, the
religion of the Nazis. These ideals, Renoir suggests in La Marseillaise, a film initially financed by
trade union subscriptions, are heroically embodied in the ordinary people, not the powerful and
charismatic national leader glorified by another great French director, Abel Gance, in his 1927 silent
masterpiece Napoléon, which had been re-released in 1935 in a sound version which underlined its
political message. (20)
At first glance it seems surprising that, particularly in the '30s, when many politically conservative
films were commercially successful, Gance was so much less able than Renoir to protect the artistic
independence both craved. Certainly Renoir's projects and ambitions usually matched his financial
resources. The space he grants actors for their own creative input gives his films a lighter, more
human and amusing surface; their seriousness tends not to be immediately apparent, being
embedded in their structure rather than foregrounded, as is the case in Gance' s work. Only very
occasionally, as in La Marseillaise, does he show interest in the spectacle that was so important to
Gance. Fewer than half-a-dozen shots are fired in La Grande illusion, one of the greatest of war
films, and there are no combat sequences; in some sequences here, as well as in other films, he is
able to economise financially by using sound to suggest the presence of a crowd of extras.
Moreover, his most artistically ambitious films, unlike those of Gance, typically run to a standard
commercial length: an hour and a half to two hours.
The commercial success of another film starring Gabin, an adaptation of Zola's La Bête humaine,
encouraged Renoir, his younger brother Claude, and three friends to invest in the creation of a new
production company, Nouvelle Edition Française. The plan was to involve other directors, and
actors such as Gabin, and make two independent films a year. There were plans to negotiate
exclusive use of a large Paris cinema owned by Marcel Pagnol's independent, Marseilles-based
company, with which Renoir had worked earlier when making Toni (1934), a compelling forerunner
of Italian neo-realism. Founded on the runaway success of the filmic adaptation of Pagnol's stage-
play Marius (1931), this company had, throughout the '30s, enjoyed a consistent run of commercial
successes, perhaps because its films, though full of life and personality, were not too ambitious or
demanding artistically.
The first production of the new company was La Règle du jeu. Initially it was conceived as an
adaptation of de Musset's stage comedy Les Caprices de Marianne. Renoir has written that during
the shooting he was torn between two conflicting desires, to make a comedy and to tell a tragic
story. This tension resulted in probably his most complex work: "It's a war film; nevertheless there's
not a mention of war in it. Beneath its benign appearance, this story strikes at the very structure of
our society." (21) Even the smallest elements of plot and characterization work together, as if in a
marvellous mechanical construction, to precipitate the murder of a national hero. This image of a
society running as out of control as a runaway train eerily anticipates the national disaster to befall
France a year later. It also echoes the passage with which Zola ended La Bête humaine, a train full
of drunken soldiers on the way to what was to be the debacle at Sedan, pulled by an engine with no
one in control because the driver and fireman have killed each other in a drunken, jealous brawl.
Renoir replaced this with a conclusion more in keeping with the dignity of labour, one based on an
incident he witnessed when starting on the preparation of the film. (22) He has the fireman (Julien
Carette) succeed in bringing the train safely to a halt following the suicide of the driver, his friend
Lantier (Jean Gabin). Even here, with deterministic subject matter and after the collapse of the
Popular Front, the changes Renoir made from Zola's novel distanced him from the fatalism of the
prevailing school of French filmmaking, poetic realism. Only with La Règle du jeu, on the eve of
war, did his vision incorporate the poetic realists' fatalism, but in a structure more complex and with
characters more controversial than any of theirs. Renoir's protagonists are no group on the margins
of society, but high society itself; his doomed hero no army deserter—as in Carné's Quai des brumes
(1938), which he had furiously denounced (23)—or factory-worker destroyed by sexual jealousy,
but a national hero.
La Règle du jeu: Christine (Nora Grégor) deceives Geneviève (Mila Parély), pretending she has
known about the latter's affair with Robert La Chesnaye all along
La Règle du jeu is all the more disturbing because
so many of the characters are so likeable, their
repeated inability to make a correct or decisive
choice (echoing the political indecisiveness of the
nation itself) resulting from generosity and
understanding. Not surprisingly, audiences found
the film's vision, and its changes of pace and tone,
from drawing-room comedy through farce to
tragedy and cover-up, intolerable. In despair,
Renoir told Marguerite to recut the film, omitting
the passages most offensive to the audience.
Unfortunately a series of delays, caused by bad
weather on location, then by Renoir's development
of new scenes, had caused the production to secure
additional funding from Jean Jay at Gaumont, as an
advance against proceeds from exhibition. Whilst
this had not undermined Renoir's independence
during the shooting, it had already led to cuts from
Renoir's preferred edit before the film opened. After
six weeks the government banned the film, arguing
the need: "to avoid representations of our country,
our traditions, and our race that change its
character, lie about it, and deform it through the
prism of an artistic individual who is often original
but not always sound." (24) At the time this
happened Renoir was in Italy, responding to a
personal appeal from a government official! A few days later, despite his self-declared pacifism, he
was back in uniform, a reservist mobilized for the war. Thus La Règle du jeu became the only
production of Nouvelle Edition Française.
For many years, the only prints available were more than half-an-hour shorter than Renoir's initial
cut. Fortunately in 1956 the discovery of 224 boxes of out-takes which had survived an Allied
bombing raid led to the creation of a version which was lacking only one minor scene that Renoir
had wished to include. Thus La Règle du jeu, possibly the greatest film of the first century of
cinema, was restored to life.
After a brief recall to the colours, Renoir returned to Italy to shoot Tosca (1940), with Michel Simon
as Scarpia. The government hoped, wrongly, that such cultural collaborations would help keep Italy
out of the war. Following the Fall of France, the American father of documentary, Robert Flaherty,
helped Renoir flee to Hollywood. He was accompanied by his new partner, Dido Freire, whom he
subsequently married, and with whom he spent the rest of his life. They made their home in
California, and Renoir became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1946, though retaining
his French citizenship. He found Hollywood's working methods uncongenial, and he made a mere
six films in the U.S.A. Of these, only two were for major studios, and in each case a two-picture
deal ended after a single film. A third was an instructional film for the Office of War Information,
aimed to inform U.S. servicemen about France. The other three were independent productions.
Darryl Zanuck, head of Twentieth Century-Fox, Renoir's first studio, summed up his Hollywood
career thus: "Renoir has plenty of talent, but he's not one of us." (25)
Nevertheless, several of these films are of great interest, particularly This Land is Mine (1943), an
attempt to evoke for an American audience conditions in occupied Europe and Vichy France, The
Southerner (1945), and The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), based on a stage adaptation of an
important French novel by Octave Mirbeau.
When Hollywood seemed to have lost interest in his work, private finance once again led to the
realization of one of Renoir's projects. Unable to sell his idea for an adaptation of Rumer Godden's
novel The River, based on her childhood in Bengal, to any Hollywood producer—he comments that:
"in every case the response was the same—India without elephants and tiger-hunts was just not
India" (26)—he was about to give up on it when a businessman called Kenneth McEldowney
contacted him. McEldowney, who owned a chain of florist shops, wanted to make a film about
India, where he had served during the war, but had discovered Renoir had already taken out an
option on Godden's novel. He financed a research trip Renoir made to India, and agreed the novelist
should collaborate on the screenplay, decisions which eased Renoir's task when it came to
persuading Godden to allow the project to go ahead. She had hated the previous adaptations of her
work: Enchantment (Irving Reis, 1940, produced by Samuel Goldwyn) and Powell and
Pressburger's Black Narcissus (1947). McEldowney also agreed that Renoir should have last word
on the editing of the film. It was Renoir's first colour film, and reunited him with his cameraman
nephew, Claude Renoir Junior. This meditative account of childhood, shot on location in Bengal,
suggests a new spiritual or religious (though pantheistic) dimension in Renoir's work. Released in
1951, it was the first of several colour films of great beauty, with Renoir becoming one of the
pioneers of the use of Technicolor in French feature production.
The second of these was The Golden Coach, shot in 1952 in Italy, and released in France in 1953 as
Le Carrosse d'or. Renoir, however, preferred the undubbed English-language version, with the
actors' own voices. This, arguably the greatest and most complex of films about the theatre, pushes
the notion of the back-stage musical way beyond the boundaries of the genre. Its stylistic
discontinuities offer a special and unusual beauty, and it was an important influence on Jean-Luc
Godard, who, correctly linking it to Pirandello and Six Characters in Search of an Author, expressed
his admiration for its interweaving of public display and private feelings, the theatre and real life.
(27) The resolution of this exercise in artifice confirmed Renoir's new, albeit highly personal and
unconventional, engagement with religious ideas, as did at least one of the films he made after his
return to work in France: Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1959), a hymn to Pan, and a warning against the
worship of technology. During this decade, he further explored Pirandellian themes of theatre and
identity in two stage plays. Orvet was written for Leslie Caron after he had failed to persuade the
producers to cast her in French Cancan (1955), a second, and to some extent more conventional,
back-stage musical. This once again made spectacular use of colour, and reunited Renoir with his
'30s star Jean Gabin. Aspects of the character written for Caron anticipate Nénette (Catherine
Rouvel) in Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. A second play, Carola et les cabotins, links Renoir's interest in
an exploration of the interaction between theatre and life with themes from war-time: occupation,
collaboration and resistance.
Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (a 1959 adaptation of Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
showed Renoir still willing to experiment, this time by reverting to black and white, and to multiple-
camera techniques, which had been widely revived for the shooting of live television drama.
In Le Caporal épinglé (1962) Renoir revisited the world of the prison camps and the themes of La
Grande illusion, though this time his characters were conscripts and other ranks, not officers. It ends
with a tolerant but explicit rejection of inaction. His two successful escapers reveal, once they have
succeeded in reaching Paris, that each has plans to join the resistance.
Renoir remained active through the 1960s, with a highly acclaimed biography of his father and an
equally effective novel The Notebooks of Captain Georges. He also made a short and highly
revealing film, La Direction d'acteur par Jean Renoir (1968), in which he demonstrates his methods
of working with actors by guiding Gisèle Braunberger through the rehearsal of a speech he had
adapted from a book by Rumer Godden. Nevertheless, it took him around eight years to set up his
final feature, Le Petit théâre de Jean Renoir (1969). I was disappointed when I saw it, in a season at
the Metropolitan Museum in New York in the summer of 1970. I had read his plans for C'est la
revolution, and hoped that the spirit of that unrealized project would animate this new film.
However Nick Ray, who came to the screening with us, was charmed by it, describing it as "An old
man's film." Now it is one of the films I most wish to see again. Two others are Le Déjeuner sur
l'herbe and Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier.
Though Renoir's health was deteriorating, he dictated his memoirs, which were published in 1974,
followed by three more novels. Early the next year, he made his final trip to Europe, to attend the
most complete retrospective of his films yet mounted, at the National Film Theatre, London. A few
weeks later, however, he was only able to watch from home, on television, as Ingrid Bergman
accepted an Academy Award (Oscar) for Lifetime Achievement on his behalf.
Renoir was also honoured by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which made him a
Fellow, and by the French government, who created him a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur
(Knight of the Legion of Honour). A few days after his death, an obituary appeared in the Los
Angeles Times under the heading: "The Greatest of All Directors." It was written by one of his
greatest admirers: Orson Welles.
EPILOGUE: Story into Film. Une Partie de campagne
Rodolphe stretches out as if from the audience and to articulate its
desires, and opens the shutters, revealing the deep space and
connection of interior with exterior so important to Renoir. His action
brings together the two groups of characters, thus allowing narrative
development. The image juxtaposes two ostensibly different kinds of
cinema: popular cinema—structured to fulfill the audience's desire for
visual pleasure, the satisfactions of narrative, identification and
emotional gratification; and "art" cinema—structured for an audience
desiring "serious" themes and the revelation of carefully constructed
characters and their motivations from details of their dialogue and
behaviour. Renoir's art is unusual in that it energetically combines both
kinds of discourse. Henri is still in the space of the art film. It needs
close, analytical observation to notice his rejection of the ritual of
mixing a pastis, and to read this action as indulgent and self-absorbed.
(28) Ultimately, and despite his earlier rejection of the adventure
Rodolphe has proposed, Henri will take his place in the film's
entertainment discourse, whilst in an instant Henriette (centre, on the
swing) will become the source of visual and kinetic pleasure for both
spectators and characters.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Balançoire (The Swing, 1876) is usually suggested as the model for this
passage, but for several reasons a different swing, from over a century earlier, seems far closer. This
is the painting by Fragonard also known as Hasards heureux de l'escarpolette (Some Happy
Accidents of the Swing, 1767).
The later painting projects an image of calm and tranquility, the earlier an energy and exuberance
closer to that in Renoir's film. Moreover its title suggests a theme the film develops in detail, but
which is only hinted at in the short story on which the film is based, and absent entirely from the
painting by Renoir's father. This is voyeurism. For de Maupassant, the draughts from Henriette's
skirts seem more intoxicating than the sight of "her pretty legs up to her knees" (29; the passage
seems an early acknowledgement of the potency of pheromones!). It was precisely to demonstrate
his ownership of what only he should see, and the swing would reveal, that led to the Baron de
Saint-Julien commissioning the Fragonard. It is recorded that he described his idea to the first artist
he hoped to employ to realise it in these terms: "I should like to have you paint Madame (pointing to
his mistress) on a swing that a bishop would set going. You will place me in such a way that I would
be able to see the legs of this lovely young girl..." (30)
The film sequence returns to Rodolphe and Henri for a time, allowing a discussion of casual sex and
emotional responsibilities. This re-empasizes their status as men of the world, and reveals Henri's
patronising acceptance of women as sex objects. Of a dumb ex-mistress he says: "What I wanted
from her had nothing to do with intelligence!" For Rodolphe, the revelations furnished by the swing
are likely to become much more interesting if Henriette sits down, which she does. The cutting rate
is about twice as fast as in the rest of the film, perhaps because the sequence moves frequently from
one group of characters to another. There are no shots which offer an objective point of view, but
several seem to present the subjective or imaginary point of view of one or other of the protagonists.
Renoir introduces Henri and Rodolphe much earlier than de Maupassant, after a couple of minutes,
in Shot 6, where they are watching and commenting on the newcomers, the Dufour family, just after
they've arrived. This inaugurates the movement between groups of characters so important in the
film's narrative organisation. They talk with contempt about such lower class day-trippers, an
inscription in the fiction of the politics of 1936: the film was shot in July, just after the newly
elected Popular Front government and the employers had negotiated the Matignon agreement, which
provided for wage increases, trade union rights, a 40-hour week, paid holidays for workers, and
improved social services. Nimbyism was in the air.
In the story, Henri and Rodolphe have no role in the swing sequence. Nor does the group of
seminarians. Through the latter Renoir inscribes in his text two distinct echoes from elsewhere,
whose meanings range wider than, perhaps, he was consciously aware. First there's the suggestion of
clerical hypocrisy, echoing Fragonard's bishop, pushing the swing in answer to Saint-Julien's whim.
Second, there's a motif from actress Sylvia Bataille's personal life: the seminarians appear after her
fictional father and fiancé, her "privileged males", have wandered off (as they do also in de
Maupassant). At the right of the front row of the seminarians is Sylvia's husband, erotic avant garde
novelist Georges Bataille; next to him (centre) is an international master of the photographic gaze,
Henri Cartier-Bresson, who has commented thus on the sequence: "Jean always wanted his
assistants to feel what it was like on the other side of the camera, and I was given the role of a
seminarist... I walked along with Georges Bataille, the husband... of Sylvia..., and as she was on the
swing I had to look with amazement at her petticoats!" (31) The Batailles were already partially
estranged; when the marriage finally broke down, Sylvia Bataille married psychoanalyst Jacques
Lacan.
In de Maupassant, Henri and Rodolphe first appear as lunch is about to be served, sprawled in deck-
chairs placed in the shade of the tree under which the Dufours plan to eat. Any discussions they may
have had about the possibilities of an afternoon adventure, so important an aspect of the way in
which Renoir transforms de Maupassant's laconic narration into concrete actions and dialogue, are
left to the imagination. The result of these transformations is to make Henri a far more manipulative
and controlling character than in the story, though his doleful, wistful countenance and mournful
objections to the adventure before he's noticed how charming Henriette is, have seduced many
viewers into regarding him as a victim of fate.
In both story and film, he refers (with a touch of amusement) to the secluded spot on the river bank
where he and Henriette end by making love, as his "cabinet particulier." Subtitles translate this as
"study", whilst a fairly recent translation of de
Maupassant renders it “private hideaway." (32)
However the term in fact suggests something
considerably more sordid. A cabinet particulier
was a private dining room in a restaurant, and
these were notorious as locations for sexual
encounters. In Flaubert's L'Education
sentimentale Madame Arnoux "took offence at
being treated like a woman of easy virtue" when
her husband wants to dine in one alone with her, "
when in fact, coming from Arnoux, such
treatment was a proof of affection." (33) In Zola's
Une Partie de campagne La Curée, the guilty passion of Renée Saccard
and her stepson Maxime is consummated in one,
the same room that, the previous Wednesday, Maxime had entertained a woman he'd picked up on
the boulevards. Renoir's Les Bas fonds, shot later in 1936, has a scene in which Pepel the thief (Jean
Gabin) rescues Natacha (Junie Astor) from the clutches of the inspector (Gabriello). The tragedy of
Une Partie de campagne is that, though in both story and film Henri feels momentary pangs of
regret over the affair, he treats Henriette as he would any casual pick-up, and her grace, innocence,
energy and spontaneity are sacrificed to the prejudices and conventions of a patriarchal, class
society. When I fell in love with the film nearly 40 years ago (I was taking a language course in
France in the hope of being able to read Cahiers du cinéma more easily, and thus was watching an
unsubtitled print), these emotions and meanings were communicated clearly and directly without
need of explanatory commentary (though a term like "patriarchal" was yet to enter our discourse).
Now, in our ostensibly more democratic society, the past, of the 1880s, when the film was set, or the
1930s, when it was shot, has, indeed, become "a foreign country." (34)
Fragonard's painting is currently once again the object of artistic attention. When Renoir made use
of it he may have been drawing on material beyond his conscious awareness (though his father had
been an admirer of Fragonard's work). However the prize-winning choreographer Susan Stroman
clearly set out to liberate Saint-Julien's young mistress from his ownership, and his controlling gaze,
when she made the painting the basis of the first segment of the dance musical Contact, a major
box-office success originally in New York and now in London. She has replaced the elderly lackey,
or bishop (or both: the Baron held a hereditary position of authority in relation to the French
clergy!), guiding the swing by a lusty young servant who, when the Baron swans off for some more
champagne, delights the mistress by initiating her into the erotic potential of the swing.
For many critics the extraordinary energy of the dance which is the climax of Renoir's French Cancan represents a comparable liberation from male control. Ray Durgnat makes the point with passion and enthusiasm: "Renoir makes sense of the cancan and its social significance. The dancers unleash the insolence not only of proletarian energy, but of the aggressive female, and storm the 19
th-
century bourgeois male patriarchy like the light brigade of sexual suffragettes which they are. As they sport the sweet dynamism of thighs long smothered under petticoats and startle the exhilarated male in a massed
French Cancan
scissors-splits which is, of course, a kinaesthetic equivalent of crutch photography, the suggestion is that the erstwhile weaker sex won't henceforth find the erstwhile lord of creation too hard a nut to crack. A river of feminine energy flows devastatingly, but not destructively, through society." (35)
…the final cancan sequence... It's extraordinary: it wraps up the whole story, but has
practically no dialogue; it keeps cutting backstage and to the audience. There's no
sequence I can think of that has such joie de vivre.
—Peter Bogdanovich (36)
Colour, music and the pride of life take the screen by storm, and the
vitality of it all leaves the audience... as exhausted as if they had
themselves been taking part.
—The Times (London) (37)
By the time the can-can dancers mount their final invasion of decor
and decorum both, French Cancan erupts as the most joyous hymn to
the glory of art in the history of the cinema.
—Andrew Sarris (38)
Such words describe how the sequence works for me. But are we all, as contemporary students
have often suggested, just using notions of art and its liberating energies to disguise the fact that
this spectacle, through the very nature of its content, reasserts the power of the voyeuristic gaze
of the male audience? Yet, if that is so, why do so many female viewers find the sequence
equally liberating?
Postscript
2006 There was a major Renoir retrospective at the National Film Theatre in London early this year.
Whilst the publicity exhorted us to “Fall in Love with the Films of Jean Renoir”, there was
nowhere a hint that to do so would be to engage with the work of one of the greatest artists of
the 20th. century. It felt as if, in British film culture, love of art is now the love that dare not
speak its name! Moreover, the retrospective received no coverage from arts programmes on
B.B.C. radio, although they found plenty of time to interview the likes of Woody Allen at
length! Imagine a major exhibition of the paintings of Renoir’s father being greeted with similar
indifference! Mercifully, at least no one referred to Renoir’s masterpieces as “cult films”, that
patronising description that acts as the discursive gatekeeper allowing our intellectuals to avoid
engagement with the beauties and complexities of cinematic art.
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Endnotes:
1. David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, U.S.A. and U.K., Alfred A.
Knopf and Little Brown, 2002, where he adds: "He is the greatest of directors; he justifies
cinema. But he shrugs off the weight of 'masterpieces' or 'definitive statements.'” ˄
2. This was in 1944, when the only versions available had been radically cut. See
interview with Richard Roud, “Memories of Resnais” in Sight and Sound, Vol. 38,
No. 3, Summer 1969 ˄
3. Interview filmed by ORTF 1961, cited in Alexander Sesonske, Jean Renoir: the
French Films, 1924-1939, Cambridge Mass. & London, Harvard University Press,
1980 ˄
4. Octave (Jean Renoir) in La Règle du jeu ˄
5. Interview with Marguerite Bussot, Pour Vous, 25 January 1939, reprinted in Bernard
Chardère, Jean Renoir, Lyon, Premier Plan nos. 22, 23, 24, May 1962 ˄
6. Martin O'Shaughnessy, Jean Renoir, Manchester and New York, Manchester University
Press, 2000 ˄
7. Eugène Lourié, My Work in Films, San Diego, New York and London, Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1985 ˄
8. Jean Renoir, Ma Vie et mes films, Paris, Flammarion, 1974 (my translation) ˄
9. Jean Renoir, My Life and My Films, London, Collins 1974 ˄
10. Ronald Bergan, Jean Renoir, Projections of Paradise: a Biography, London,
Bloomsbury, 1992. This has been an invaluable source of biographical information for
this article, although his informant Alice Figheira seems uneccessarily and perhaps
misleadingly catty about Renoir's relationship with Marguerite. The relationship between
Lange and Valentine in Le Crime de Monsieur Lange suggests the possibility of
something richer. ˄
11. V. I. Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting, New York, Grove Press, 1960 ˄
12. Renoir, My Life and My Films, 1974 ˄
13. Renoir, Ma Vie et mes films, (my translation) ˄
14. Renoir, My Life and My Films, 1974 ˄
15. Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis, London, Starword, 2nd
edition, 1992 ˄
16. Lourié, 1985 ˄
17. Renoir, My Life and My Films, 1974 ˄
18. Bergan, 1992, who also cites the quotation, which is from Jean Renoir, Entretiens et
propos, Cahiers du cinéma, 1979 ˄
19. Cited in Christopher Faulkner, Jean Renoir: A Guide to References and Resources,
Boston, G.K. Hall, 1979. ˄
20. Norman King, Abel Gance: a Politics of Spectacle, London, BFI, 1984. The received
wisdom is that Gance cut into his original negative because he needed the money a
re-release might earn him. However King comments: “it was a new film, and one which
had a specific impact in the political circumstances of 1935.” ˄
21. Renoir, My Life and My Films, 1974 ˄
22. Renoir's description of this incident, which he does not connect with the content of his
film, is in Claud Gauteur (ed.), Ecrits 1926-1971, Paris, Pierre Belfond, 1974. ˄
23. Bergan, 1992 ˄
24. Bergan, 1992, quoting La Cinématographie française (France's pre-war trade paper). ˄
25. Renoir, Ma Vie et mes films, (my translation) ˄
26. Renoir, My Life and My Films, 1974 ˄
27. Jean-Luc Godard interviewed by Cahiers du cinéma, December 1962, translated for Jean-
Luc Godard, Godard on Godard, eds. Jean Narboni and Tom Milne, Da Capo Press, 1972
˄
28. Sesonske, 1980 ˄
29. Guy De Maupassant, Une Partie de campagne, Paris in La Vie moderne, April 1881,
reprinted (1881) in the collection La Maison Tellier ˄
30. Donald Posner, "The Swinging Women of Watteau and Fragonard", Art Bulletin, LXIV,
March 1982 ˄
31. “A Memoir by Henri Cartier-Bresson” in Jean Renoir, Letters, (eds.) David Thompson
and Lorraine Lo Bianco, translated by Craig Carison, Natasha Arnoldi, Michael
Wells and Anneliese Varaldviev, London and Boston, Faber and Faber, 1994 ˄
32. Guy De Maupassant, A Day in the Country and Other Stories, Oxford and New York,
Oxford University Press, 1990, translation by David Coward ˄
33. Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education, Baltimore, Maryland and
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin Books, 1964, a translation by Robert
Baldick of L'Education sentimentale, Paris 1869 ˄
34. L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between, London, Penguin Books, 1997 (first published 1953) ˄
35. Raymond Durgnat, Jean Renoir, London, Studio Vista, 1975 ˄
36. Peter Bogdanovich, “Director's Cut”, The Independent (London), 21 December 1990 ˄
37. 29 August 1955, when the film was first released in the U.K.; at that time, reviews in The
Times were unsigned. ˄
38. Village Voice, 2 April 1985, on the occasion of the American première of a complete
Version of the film. ˄
© James Leahy 2003/2006/2011
Filmography Directed by Renoir:
La Fille de l'eau (1924) France Production Company: Films Jean Renoir/Maurice Touzé/Studio Films Distribution: Maurice Rouhier, later Pierre Braunberger Screenplay: Pierre Lestringuez and Jean Renoir Photography: Jean Bachelet, Alphonse Gibory Production Design: Jean Renoir Cast: Catherine Hessling (Virginia), Pierre Lestringuez dit Philippe (Uncle Jeff), Pierre Champagne (Justin Crépoix), Harold Lewingston (Georges Raynal), Maurice Touzé (Ferret), Pierre Renoir (peasant with pitchfork)
Nana (1926) France/Germany Production Company: Films Jean Renoir Distribution: Aubert-Pierre Braunberger Screenplay: Pierre Lestringuez from the novel by Emile Zola Intertitles: Denise Leblond-Zola, Jean Renoir Assistant Director: André Cerf Photography: Edmund Corwin, Jean Bachelet Production Design: Claude Autant-Lara
Jean Renoir (right) and cameraman Curt
Courant shooting La Bête humaine. They are in the fragment of the set of the Roubauds'
apartment which Lourié had built overlooking the marshalling yards at Le Havre
Cast: Catherine Hessling (Nana), Werner Krauss (Count Muffat), Jean Angelo (Count de Vandeuvres), Valeska Gert (Zoé), Pierre Lestringuez dit Philippe (Bordenave), Pierre Champagne (La Faloise), Raymond Guérin-Catelain (Georges Hugon), Claude Autant-Lara dit Moore (Fauchery), André Cerf ('Le Tigre'), Pierre Braunberger (spectator at the theatre)
Charleston (Sur un air de Charleston) (1927) France
Production Company: Films Jean Renoir Distribution: Néo-Film (Pierre Braunberger) Producer: Jean Renoir Assistant Directors: André Cerf, Claude Heymann Screenplay: Pierre Lestringuez, from an idea by André Cerf Photography: Jean Bachelet Cast: Catherine Hessling (The Dancer), Johnny Huggins (The Explorer), André Cerf (The Monkey), Pierre Braunberger, Jean Renoir, Pierre Lestringuez, André Cerf (Four Angels)
Marquitta (1927) France Production Company: La Société des Artistes Réunis Production Manager: M. Gargour Distribution: Jean de Merly Screenplay: Pierre Lestringuez and Jean Renoir Photography: Jean Bachelet, Raymond Agnel Production Design: Robert-Jules Garnier Cast: Marie-Louise Iribe (Marquitta), Jean Angelo (Prince Vlasco), Henri Debain (Count Dimitrieff, the Chamberlain), Lucien Mancini (Step-Father), Pierre Lestringuez dit Philippe (Casino Owner), Pierre Champagne (Taxi Driver)
La Petite marchande d'allumettes (The Little Match Girl) (1928) France
Producers: Jean Renoir, Jean Tedesco Distribution: Films SOFAR Screenplay: Jean Renoir, from stories by Hans Christian Andersen Photography: Jean Bachelet Production Design: Erik Aaes Assistant Directors: Claude Heymann, Simone Hamiguet
Cast: Catherine Hessling (Karen), Jean Storm (Young Man/Wooden Soldier), Manuel Raaby (Policeman/Death), Aimée Tedesco dit Amy Wells (Mechanical Doll) With synchronized music arranged by Manuel Rosenthal and Michael Grant.
Tire au flanc (1928) France Production Company: Néo-Film Producer: Pierre Braunberger Distribution: Armor-Film, Editions Pierre Braunberger Screenplay: Jean Renoir, André Cerf, Claude Heymann, from the play by André Mouézy-Eon, A. Sylvane Intertitles: André Rigaud Photography: Jean Bachelet Production Design: Erik Aaes Assistant Directors: André Cerf, Lola Markovitch Cast: Georges Pomiès (Jean Dubois d'Ombelles), Michel Simon (Joseph), Fridette Faton (Georgette), Félix Oudart (Colonel Brochard), Jean Storm (Lieutenant Daumel), Manuel Rabinovitch dit Raaby (adjutant), Kinny Dorlay (Lily), Maryanne (Madame Blandin), Zellas (Muflot), Jeanne Helbing (Solange), Catherine Hessling (girl), André Cerf (soldier), Max Dalban (soldier)
Le Tournoi (Le Tournoi dans la cité) (1928) Production Company: Société des Films Historiques Producer: Henry Dupuy-Mazuel Assistant Director: André Cerf Distribution: Jean de Merly, Fernand Weil Screenplay: Henry Dupuy-Mazuel, André Jaeger-Schmidt after the novel by Henry Dupuy-Mazuel Photography: Marcel Lucien, Maurice Desfassiaux Production Design: Robert Mallet-Stevens Editor: André Cerf Cast: Aldo Nadi (François de Baynes), Jackie Monnier (Isabelle Ginori), Enrique Rivero (Henri de Rogier), Blanche Bernis (Catherine de Médicis), Suzanne Desprès (Countess de Baynes), Manuel Rabinovitch dit Raaby (Count Ginori), Max Dalban (captain of the watch)
Le Bled (1929) France Production Company: Société des Films Historiques Producer: Henry Dupuy-Mazuel Assistant Directors: André Cerf and René Arcy-Hennery Distribution: Mappemonde Films Screenplay: Henry Dupuy-Mazuel, André Jaeger-Schmidt Intertitles: André Rigaud Photography: Marcel Lucien, Léon Morizet Production Design: William Aguet Editor: Marguerite Houlé Cast: Jackie Monnier (Claude Duvernet), Enrique Rivero (Pierre Hoffer), Diana Hart (Diane Duvernet), Manuel Rabinovitch dit Raaby (Manuel Duvernet), Alexandre Arquillière (Christian Hoffer), Jacques Becker (a Hoffer farmhand)
On purge bébé (1931) France Production Company/Distribution: Braunberger-Richebé Production Manager: Charles David Assistant Directors: Claude Heymann, Pierre Schwab Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Pierre Prévert, from the play by Georges Feydeau Photography: Théodore Sparkhul, Roger Hubert Production Design: Gabriel Scognamillo Music: Paul Misraki Sound: D. F. Scanlon, Bugnon Editor: Jean Mamy Cast: Jacques Louvigny (Bastien Follavoine), Marguerite Pierry (Julie Follavoine), Sacha Tarride (Toto), Michel Simon (Chouilloux), Olga Valéry (Madame Chouilloux), Fernandel (Horace Truchet)
La Chienne (1931) France Production Company: Braunberger-Richebé Distribution: Braunberger-Richebé, Europa-Films (C.S.C.) Production Manager: Charles David Assistant Directors: Pierre Prévert, Claude Heymann, Pierre Schwab Screenplay: Jean Renoir, André Girard, from the novel by Georges de la Fouchardière and the play adapted from it by André Mouézy-Eon Photography: Théodore Sparkhul Continuity: Suzanne de Troye Production Design: Gabriel Scognamillo Sound: Joseph de Bretagne, Marcel Courme Songs: Eugénie Buffet (“La Sérénade du pavé”), Toselli (“Sérénade”), “Malbruk s'en va-t'en guerre” Editors: Denise Batcheff, Paul Féjos; then Marguerite Houlé dit Renoir, Jean Renoir Cast: Michel Simon (Maurice Legrand), Janie Marèze (Lulu), Georges Flammand (Dédé), Magdeleine Berubet (Adèle Legrand), Gaillard (Alexis Godard), Jean Gehret (M. Dagodet), Alexandre Rignault (Langelard, the Art Critic), Lucien Mancini (Walstein, the Art Dealer), Max Dalban (Bonnard), Marcel Courme (Colonel), Sylvain Itkine (lawyer), Jane Pierson (concierge)
La Nuit du carrefour (Night at the Crossroads) (1932) France Production Company: Europa Films Distribution: Comptoir Française Cinémathèque Production Manager: Gaillard Assistant Directors: Jacques Becker, Maurice Blondeau Screenplay: Jean Renoir and Georges Simenon, from the latter's novel Photography: Marcel Lucien, Georges Asselin, assistants Paul Fabian, Claude Renoir Jr. Production Design: William Aguet, assistant Jean Castanier Sound: Joseph de Bretagne, Bugnon Editor: Marguerite Renoir, assisted by Suzanne de Troyes, with the participation of Walter Ruttmann Cast: Pierre Renoir (Inspector Maigret), Georges Térof (Lucas), Winna Winfried (Else Andersen), Georges Koudria (Carl Andersen), Jean Gehret (Emile Michonnet), Jane Pierson (Madame Michonnet), Michel Duran (Jojo), Jean Mitry (Arsène), Max Dalban (doctor), Gaillard (the butcher), Manuel Rabinovitch dit Raaby (Guido)
Boudu sauvé des eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning) (1932) France
Production Company: Société Sirius Distribution: Etablissements Jacques Haik Producers: Michel Simon, Jean Gehret, Marc le Pelletier Assistant Directors: Jacques Becker, Georges Darnoux Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Albert Valentin from the play by René Fauchois Photography: Marcel Lucien, assistants Jean-Paul Alphen, Asselin Production Design: Jean Castanier, Hugues Laurent Sound: Igor B. Kalinowski Music: Raphael, Johann Strauss Song: “Sur les bords de la Rivièra” Flautist: Jean Boulze Orpheon: Edouard Dumoulin Editor: Marguerite Renoir, assistant Suzanne de Troye Continuity: Suzanne de Troye Cast: Michel Simon (Boudu), Charles Granval (Edouard Lestingois), Marcelle Hainia (Madame Lestingois), Séverine Lerczinska (Anne-Marie), Max Dalban (Gadin), Jean Gehret (Vigour), Jean Dasté (Student), Jacques Becker (poet in park), Jane Pierson (Rose), Georges Darnoux (oarsman)
Chotard et Cie (Chotard & Co.) (1933) France Production Company: Société des Films Roger Ferdinand Producer: Roger Ferdinand Assistant Director: Jacques Becker Distribution: Universal Screenplay: Jean Renoir, from the play by Roger Ferdinand Photography: Joseph-Louis Mundwiller, assistants Claude Renoir Jr., René Ribault Production Design: Jean Castanier
Sound: Igor B. Kalinowski Continuity: Suzanne de Troye Editors: Marguerite Renoir, Suzanne de Troye Cast: Fernand Charpin (Français Chotard), Jeanne Lory (Madame Chotard), Georges Pomiès (Julien Collinet), Jeanne Boitel (Reine Chotard Collinet), Max Dalban (Emile)
Madame Bovary (1933) France Production Company: La Nouvelle Société de Film Producer: Gaston Gallimard, Robert Aron Distribution: Compagnie Independente de Distribution Production Manager: René Jaspard Assistant Directors: Pierre Desouches, Jacques Becker Screenplay: Jean Renoir, from the novel by Gustave Flaubert Photography: Jean Bachelet, assistants Alphonse Gibory, Claude Renoir Jr. Production Design: Robert Gys, Eugène Lourié, Georges Wakhevitch Sound: Marcel Courme, Joseph de Bretagne Music: Darius Milhaud.(“Le Printemps dans la plaine”), Donizetti (“Lucia de Lammermoor”) Editor: Marguerite Renoir Cast: Valentine Tessier (Emma Bovary), Pierre Renoir (Charles Bovary), Alice Tissot (Old Madame Bovary), Max Dearly (M. Homais), Daniel Lecourtois (Léon Dupuis), Fernand Fabre (Rudolphe Boulanger), Pierre Laquey (Hippolyte Tautin), Robert le Vigan (Lheureux), Romain Bouquet, (Maître Guillaumin), André Fouche (Justin)
Toni (1934) France
Production Company: Films d'Aujourd'hui Distribution: Films Marcel Pagnol Production Manager: Pierre Gaut Assistant Directors: Georges Darnoux, Antonio Canor Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Carl Einstein, from a true story found by Jacques Mortier Photography: Claude Renoir Jr. Production Design: Marius Braquier, Léon Bourrely Sound: Barbishanian Music: Paul Bozzi, Joseph Kosma Editors: Marguerite Renoir, Suzanne de Troye Cast: Charles Blavette (Toni), Jenny Hélia (Marie), Celia Montalvan (Josefa), Max Dalban (Albert), Edouard Delmont (Fernand), Andrex (Gabi), André Kovachevitch (Sebastien), Paul Bozzi (Jacques, the guitarist)
Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936) France Production Company: Obéron Distribution: Minerva Producer: André Halley des Fontaines Production Manager: Geneviève Blondeau Assistant Directors: Georges Darnoux, Jean Castanier Screenplay: Jacques Prévert, Jean Renoir, from a story by Jean Castanier Photography: Jean Bachelet Production Design: Jean Castanier, Robent Gys Sound: Guy Moreau, Louis Bogé, Roger Loisel, Robert Teisseire Music: Jean Wiener Song “Au jour le jour, à la nuit la nuit”: Joseph Kosma Orchestra: Roger Desormière Editor: Marguerite Renoir, Marthe Huguet Continuity: Marguerite Renoir Cast: Jules Berry (Batala), René Lefèvre (Amédée Lange), Florelle (Valentine), Nadia Sibirskaïa (Estelle), Sylvia Bataille (Edith), Marcel Levesque (le concierge), Maurice Baquet (Charles), Jacques Brunius (Baigneur), Henri Guisol (Meunier fils), Marcel Duhamel (Louis), Paul Grimault (Typesetter), Jean Dasté (Illustrator), Sylvain Itkine (Inspector Juliani), Odette Talazac (la concierge)
La Vie est à nous (Life Belongs to Us/ People of France) (1936) France Production Company: Parti Communiste Français Distribution: 1936 (non-commercial: the film had not been passed by the censorship, and screenings were
not open to the public) Ciné-Liberté; from 1969 Cinémas Associés, prints owned by L 'Avant-Scène du Cinéma. Directors: Jean Renoir, Jacques Becker, André Zwoboda, Jean-Paul le Chanois, dit Dreyfus, Jacques Brunius, André Swoboda, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Pierre Unik, Maurice Lime Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Paul Vaillant-Couturier, Jean-Paul Dreyfus, Pierre Unik; (the content of one scene suggests that Ilya Ehrenburg, the Izvetsia correspondent in Paris throughout the 1930s, may have had an input) Photography: Louis Page, Jean-Serge Bourgoin, Jean Isnard, Alain Douarinou, Claude Renoir Jr., Nicholas Hayer (and, according to various sources, Marcel Carné and Henri Cartier-Bresson) Music: “Internationale”, “Song of the Komsomols” by Shostakovitch, “Auprès de ma blonde”, “La Cucaracha” sung by Chorale Populaire de Paris, directed by Suzanna Conte Sound: Robert Teisseire Editor: Marguerite Renoir Cast: Jean Dasté (teacher), Jacques Brunius (President of the Administrative Council), Pierre Unik (Marcel Cachin' s secretary), Julien Bertheau (René, a young worker), Nadia Sibirskaia (Ninette), Emile Drain (Gustave), Gaston Modot (Philippe), Charles Blavette (Tonin), Max Dalban (Foreman), Madeleine Solange (factory worker), Jacques Becker (unemployed worker), Jean Renoir, Sylvain Itkine, Jean-Paul Dreyfus, Léon Larive, Roger Blin, Vladimir Sokoloff, and (as themselves) Marcel Cachin, André Marty, Maurice Thorez, Jacques Duclos, Paul Vaillant-Couturier. Stock footage of Léon Blum, Colonel de la Roque, Adolf Hitler, et al.
Une Partie de campagne (A Day in the Country) (1936; final cut 1946) France Production Company: Films du Panthéon Distribution: Films de la Pléiade Producer: Pierre Braunberger Production Manager: Roger Woog Production Administrator: Jacques Brunius Assistant Directors: Jacques Becker, Henri Cartier-Bresson dit Cartier (some sources also list Yves Allégret, Claude Heymann and Jacques Brunius) Screenplay: Jean Renoir, from the story by Guy de Maupassant Photography: Claude Renoir Jr., Bourgoin Stills: Eli Lotar Production Design: Robert Gys Sound: Marcel Courme, Joseph de Bretagne Music: Joseph Kosma, song sung by Germaine Montero Orchestra: Roger Desormière Assistant Director: Jacques Becker Editor: Marguerite Renoir, Marinette Cadix Cast: Sylvia Bataille (Henriette Dufour), Georges Darnoux dit Saint-Saëns (Henri), Gabriello (M. Dufour), Jane Marken (Madame Dufour), Paul Temps (Anatole), Jacques Brunius dit Borel (Rodolphe), Jean Renoir (Père Poulain), Marguerite Renoir (Servant), Gabrielle Fontan (Grandmother), Pierre Lestringuez (priest), Henri Cartier-Bresson and Georges Bataille (seminarians), Alain Renoir (boy fishing)
Les Bas-fonds (The Lower Depths) (1936) France Production Company: Albatross (Alexandre Kamenka) Distribution: Les Distributeurs Français, S.A. Production Manager: Vladimin Zederbaum Assistant Directors: Jacques Becker, Joseph Soiffer Screenplay: Eugene Zamiatine, Jacques Companéez, from the play by Maxim Gorky Adapted by Jean Renoir, Charles Spaak Photography: Jean Bachelet, Fedote Bourgassof Production Design: Eugène Lourié, Hugues Laurent Sound: Robert Ivonnet Music: Jean Wiener, Charles Desormière Song: lyrics Charles Spaak, voice Irène Joachim Editor: Marguerite Renoir Cast: Louis Jouvet (Baron), Jean Gabin (Pepel), Suzy Prim (Vassilissa), Vladimir Sokoloff (Kostileff), Junie Astor (Natacha), Robert le Vigan (Actor), Gabriello (Inspector), René Genin (Luka), Jany Holt (Nastya), Maurice Baquet (Aliocha), Léon Larive (Félix), Paul Temps, Sylvain Itkine, Jacques Becker
La Grande illusion (1937) France Production Company: RAC (Frank Rollmer, Alexandre and Albert Pinkéwitch) Distribution: Réalisation d'Art Cinématographique Production Manager: Raymond Blondy Assistant Director: Jacques Becker Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Charles Spaak Technical Consultant: Carl Koch Photography: Christian Matras, assistants: Claude Renoir Jr., Jean Bourgoin, Bourreaud Stills: Sam Lévin Production Design: Eugène Lourié Sound: Joseph de Bretagne Music: Joseph Kosma Editor: Marguerite Renoir, assistant Marthe Huguet; 1958, restoration for re-release, Renée Lichtig Cast: Jean Gabin (Lt. Maréchal), Pierre Fresnay (Captain de Boeldieu), Erich von Stroheim (Captain von Rauffenstein), Marcel Dalio (Rosenthal), Julien Carette (Traquet), Dita Parlo (Elsa), Gaston Modot (Engineer), Jean Dasté (Teacher), Sylvain Itkine (Demolder), Jacques Becker (English officer)
La Marseillaise (1938) France Production Company: Conféderation General de Travail (confederation of trade unions), then Société de Production et d'Exploitation du Film La Marseillaise Distribution: RAC, World Pictures Production Managers: André Zwoboda, A. Seigneur Assistant Directors: Jacques Becker, Carl Koch, Claude Renoir Sr., Jean-Paul Dreyfus, Louis Demazure, Marc Maurette, Tony Corteggiani Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Carl Koch, M. and Mme. N. Martel Dreyfus Photography: Jean-Serge Bourgoin, Alain Douarinou, Jean-Marie Maillols, assistants Jean-Paul Alphen, Jean Louis Stills: Sam Lévin Production Design: Léon Barsacq, Georges Wakhevitch, Jean Périer Editor: Marguerite Renoir, assistant Marthe Huguet Shadow Theatre: Lotte Reiniger Sound: Joseph de Bretagne, Jean-Roger Bertrand, J. Demede Music: Lalande, Rameau, Grétny, Mozart, J.S. Bach, Joseph Kosma, Rouget de l'Isle, Sauveplane Orchestra: Roger Desormière Cast: Pierre Renoir (Louis XVI), Lisa Delamere (Marie Antoinette), Louis Jouvet (Roederer), William Aguet ((La Rochefoucauld), Georges Spanelly (La Chesnaye), Andrex (Honoré Arnaud), Ardisson (Bomier), Nadia Sibirskaïa (Louison), Jenny Hélia (orator in the Assembly), Léon Larive (Picard), Gaston Modot and Julien Carette (volunteer soldiers), Marthe Marty (Bomier' s mother)
La Bête humaine (The Human Beast, but better The Beast in Man) (1938) France Production Company/Distribution: Paris Film Production (Robert and Raymond Hakim) Production Manager: Roland Tual Assistant Directors: Claude Renoir Sr., Suzanne de Troye Screenplay: Jean Renoir, from the novel by Emile Zola Dialogue: Jean Renoir, Denise Leblond-Zola Photography: Curt Courant, Claude Renoir Jr Stills: Sam Lévin Production Design: Eugène Lourié Sound: Robert Tesseire Music: Joseph Kosma Continuity: Suzanne de Troye Editor: Marguerite Renoir, railway sequences Suzanne de Troye Cast: Jean Gabin (Jacques Lantier), Simone Simon (Séverine Roubaud), Fernand Ledoux (Roubaud), Julien Carette (Pecqueux), Jenny Hélia (Pecqueux's girlfriend), Colette Régis (Madame Victoire), Jacques Berlioz (Grandmorin), Jean Renoir (Cabuche), Balanchette Brunoy (Flore)
La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) (1939;
restored 1959) France Production Company/Distribution: Nouvelle Edition Française Production Administrator: Camille François Production Manager: Claude Renoir Sr Assistant Directors: André Zwobada, Henri Cartier- Bresson Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Carl Koch, André Zwobada Photography: Jean Bachelet, assistants: Jean-Paul Alphen, Alain Renoir Technical Advisor: Tony Corteggiani Continuity: Dido Freire Stills: Sam Lévin Production Design: Eugène Lourié, Max Douy Costumes: Coco Chanel Sound: Joseph de Bretagne Music (arranged by Roger Désormière and Joseph Kosma): Mozart, Monsigny, Saint-Saëns, Johann Strauss, Chopin, Sallabert, Vincent Scotto Orchestra: Roger Desormière Editor: Marguerite Renoir, assistant Marthe Huguet Cast: Marcel Dalio (Robert de la Chesnaye), Nora Grégor (Christine), Roland Toutain (André Jurieu), Jean Renoir (Octave), Paulette Dubost (Lisette), Mila Parély (Geneviève), Julien Carette (Marceau), Gaston
La Règle du jeu: The ambiguous image: we know that Robert and Genevieve are parting, but Christine
(watching through a spy-glass) does not
Modot (Edouard Schumacher), Odette Talazac (Charlotte de la Plante), Pierre Magnier (the General), Pierre Nay (Saint-Aubin), Richard Francoeur (M. la Bruyère), Claire Gérard (Mme. la Bruyère), Eddy Debray (Corneille, the butler), Léon Larive (Chef), Anne Mayen (Jackie), Lise Elina (Radio Reporter), André Zwoboda (Caudron engineer), Henri Cartier-Bresson (English servant), Tony Corteggiani (Berthelin), Jenny Hélia (servant), Camille François (voice of radio announcer)
Swamp Water (1941) U.S.A. Production Company: Twentieth Century-Fox Producer and dialogue director: Irving Pichel Screenplay: Dudley Nichols, from the story by Vereen Bell Photography: Peverell Marley, Lucien Ballard Production Design: Thomas Little, Richard Day Music: David Buttolph Editor: Walter Thompson Cast: Dana Andrews (Ben Ragan), Walter Huston (Thursday Ragan), Walter Brennan (Tom Keefer), Anne Baxter (Julie), John Carradine (Jesse Wick), Mary Howard (Hannah), Ward Bond (Jim Donson), Guinn Williams (Bud Donson), Virginia Gilmore (Mabel), Eugene Pallette (Sheriff), Russell Simpson (Marty McCord)
This Land is Mine (1943) U.S.A. Production Company/Distribution: R.K.O. Producers/Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Dudley Nichols Photography: Frank Redman Production Design: Eugène Lourié, Albert d'Agostino, Walter F. Keeler Sound: Terry Kellum, James Stewart Music: Lothar Perl Editor: Frederic Knudtson Cast: Charles Laughton (Albert Lory), Maureen O'Hara (Louise Martin), Kent Smith (Paul Martin), George Sanders (George Lambert), Walter Slezak (Major von Keller), Una O'Connor (Mrs. Lory), Nancy Gates (Julie Grant), George Coulouris (prosecutor)
Salute to France (1944) U.S.A. Production Company: Office of War Information Project Officer: Burgess Meredith Distribution: United Artists
Screenplay: Philip Dunne, Jean Renoir, Burgess Meredith Photography: George Webber (Army Pictorial Service) Music: Kurt Weill Supervising Editor: Helen van Dongen Editors: Marcel Cohen, Maria Reyto, Jean Oser Technical Advisor: Office of Strategic Services Cast: Burgess Meredith (Tommy), Garson Kanin (Joe and Commentary Voice), Claude Dauphin (Narrator and French soldier)
The Southerner (1945) U.S.A. Production Company: Producing Artists Inc. Distribution: United Artists Producers: Robert Hakim, David L. Loew Assistant Director: Robert Aldrich Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Hugo Butler, from the novel Hold Autumn in Your Hand by George Sessions Perry Photography: Lucien Andriot Production Design: Eugène Lourié Sound: Frank Webster Music: Werner Janssen Editor: Gregg Tallas Cast: Zachary Scott (Sam Tucker), Betty Field (Nora Tucker), Beulah Bondi (Grandma), J. Carrol Naish (Devers), Percy Kilbride (Harmie Jenkins), Norman Lloyd (Finlay), Charles Kemper (Tim)
The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) U.S.A. Production Company: Camden productions Inc. Producers: Benedict Bogeaus, Burgess Meredith Distribution: United Artists Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Burgess Meredith, from the play by André Heuzé, André de Lorde and Thielly Norès, based on the novel by Octave Mirbeau Photography: Lucien Andriot Production Design: Eugène Lourié Costumes: Barbara Karinska Music: Michel Michelet Editor: James Smith Cast: Paulette Goddard (Célestine), Burgess Meredith (Captain Mauger), Hurd Hatfield (Georges Lanlaire), Reginald Owen (M. Lanlaire), Judith Anderson (Mme. Lanlaire), Francis Lederer (Joseph), Florence Bates (Rose)
The Woman on the Beach (1947) U.S.A. Production Company/Distribution: R.K.O. Producer: Jack J. Gross Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Frank Davis, J. R. Michael Hogan, from the novel None So Blind by Mitchell Wilson Photography: Harry Wild, Leo Trover Production Design: Albert d'Agostino, Walter E. Keller Sound: Jean L. Speak, Clem Portman Music: Hanns Eisler Editors: Roland Gross, Lyle Boyer Cast: Joan Bennett (Peggy Butler), Robert Ryan (Scott Burnett), Charles Bickford (Tod Butler), Nan Leslie (Eve), Walter Sande (Vernecke)
The River (1951) U.S.A. Production Company: Oriental International Film Inc. Theater Guild Producers: Kenneth McEldowney, Jean Renoir Production Manager: Kalyan Gupta Distribution: United Artists Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Rumer Godden, from the latter's novel Photography (Technicolor): Claude Renoir Jr., operator Ramananda Sen Gupta Production Design: Eugène Lourié, Bansi Chandra Gupta Sound: Charles Paulton, Charles Knott Music: classical Indian, Schumann, Mozart, Weber (“Invitation to the Dance”) Musical Director: M. A. Partha Sarathy Editor: George Gale Cast: Nora Swinburne (Mother), Esmond Knight (Father), Arthur Shields (Mr. John), Thomas E. Breen (Captain John), Radha Sri Ram (Melanie), Adrienne Corri (Valerie), Patricia Walters (Harriet), Suprova Mukerjee (Nan), Richard Foster (Bogey), June Hillman (narrator)
The Golden Coach (Le Carrosse d'or, La Carrozzo d'Oro)
(1953) France/Italy
The River: Lourié built this platform on the river bank, away from the main set of the house, to allow the final shot to be done
without any cutsProduction Company: Panaria Films, Delphinus & Hoche Productions Distribution: Corona Producer: Francesco Alliata Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Renzo Avenzo, Giulio Macchi, Jack Kirkland, Ginette Doynel, from the play Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Merimée Photography (Technicolor): Claude Renoir Jr. Technicolor Consultant: Joan Bridge Production Design: Mario Chiari Costume design: Maria de Matteïs Sound: Joseph de Bretagne, Ovidio del Grande Music: Vivaldi, Corelli, Olivier Mettra Editors: Mario Serandrei, David Hawkins Cast: Anna Magnani (Camilla), Duncan Lamont (Viceroy), Odouardo Spadaro (Don Antonio), Riccando Rioli (Ramon), Paul Campbell (Felipe), Nadia Fiorelli (Isabelle), Dante (Harlequin), Ralph Truman (the Duke), Jean Debucourt (the Bishop), George Higgins (Martinez), Gisella Mathews (Marquisa Altamirano), Raf de la Torre (Chief Justice), Medini Brothers (child acrobats) (All 35 mm. English-language prints I have seen have suffered three brief but significant trims; these are not found in 16mm English language or the dubbed 35mm French language prints).
French Cancan (1955) France Production Company: Franco London Films, Jolly Films Distribution: Gaumont Producer: Louis Wipf Assistant Directors: Serge Vallin, Pierre Kast, Jacques Rivette Screenplay: Jean Renoir, from an idea by André-Paul Antoine Photography (Technicolor): Michel Kelber Production Design: Max Douy Costume Design: Rosine Delamare Sound: Antoine Petitjean Music: Georges van Parys Songs: “Complainte de la Butte,” lyrics by Jean Renoir; airs from Caf'Conc' of 1900, sung by Cora Vaucaire, Mario Juillard Choreography: Georges Grandjean Editor: Borys Lewin Cast: Jean Gabin (Danglard), Maria Félix (La Belle Abbesse), Françoise Arnoul (Nini), Jean-Roger Caussimon (Baron Walter), Gianni Esposito (Prince Alexandre), Philippe Clay (Casimir), Michel Piccoli
(Valorgueil), Jean Panédès (Coudrier), Lydia Johnson (Guibole), Max Dalban (Owner of La Reine Blanche), Jacques Jouanneau (Bidon), Valentine Tessier (Mme. Olympe), Franco Pastorino (Paulo), Pierre Olaf (Pierrot the whistler), Patachou (Yvette Guilbert), Edith Piaf (Eugénie Buffet), Gaston Modot (Danglard's Servant), Lia Amenda (Esther Georges), Paquerette (Prunelle), Michel Piccoli (Valorgueil), Patachou (Yvette Guilbert)
Eléna et les hommes (1956) France Production Company: Franco London Films, Les Films Gibé, Electra Compagnia Cinematografica Distribution: Cinédis Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Jean Serge, Cy Howard Photography (Eastmancolor): Claude Renoir Jr. Production Design: Jean André Costume Design: Rosine Delamare, Monique Plotin Sound: William Sivel Music: Joseph Kosma Songs: “Méfiez-vous de Paris”, “O Nuit” Singers: Léo Marjane, Juliette Greco Arrangements: Georges van Parys Editor: Borys Lewin Cast: Ingrid Bergman (Princess Eléna Sorokovska), Jean Marais (General François Rollan), Mel Ferrer (Henri de Chevincount), Pierre Bertin (Martin-Michaud), Jean Richard (Hector), Magali Noel (Lolotte), Elina Labourdette (Paulette Escoffier), Juliette Greco (Miarka), Jean Castanier (Isnard), Gaston Modot (Gypsy chief), Léo Marjane (street singer)
Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (1959) made for television, and not distributed till 1961; France Production Company: O.R.T.F., Sofirad, Compagnie Jean Renoir Distribution: Consortium Pathé Production Manager: Albert Hollebecke Screenplay: Jean Renoir, from the novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Photography: Georges Leclerc Production Design: Marcel-Louis Dieulot Sound: Joseph Richard Music: Joseph Kosma Editor: Renée Lichtig Cast: Jean-Louis Barrault (Dr. Cordelier/Opale), Teddy Billis (Maître Joly), Michel Vitold (Dr. Lucien Séverin), Jean Topant (Désiré), Micheline Gary (Marguerite), André Ceres (Inspector Salbris), Jean Renoir (as himself, the narrator), Gaston Modot (Blaise, the gardener)
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Lunch on the Grass, Picnic on the Grass) (1959) France
Production Company: Compagnie Jean Renoir Distribution: Consortium Pathé Production Manager: Ginette Doynel Screenplay: Jean Renoir Photography (Eastmancolor): Georges Leclerc Production Design: Marcel-Louis Dieulot Sound: Joseph de Bretagne Music: Joseph Kosma Editor: Renée Lichtig Cast: Paul Meurisse (Professon Etienne Alexis), Catherine Rouvel (Nénette), Fernand Sardou (Nino), Ingrid Nordine (Marie-Charlotte), Charles Blavette (Gaspard), Jean Claudio (Rosseau)
Le Caporal épinglé (The Vanishing Corporal, The Elusive Corporal) (1962) France
Directors: Jean Renoir, Guy Lefranc Production Company: Films du Cyclope Distribution: Pathé Production Manager: René G. Vuattoux Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Guy Lefranc, from the novel by Jacques Perret Photography: Georges Leclerc Production Design: Eugene Herrly
Sound: Antoine Petitjean Music: Joseph Kosma Editor: Renée Lichtig Cast: Jean-Pierre Cassel (Corporal), Claude Brasseur (Pater), Claude Rich (Ballochet), Jean Carmet (Guillaume), Jacques Jouanneau (Penche-à-gauche), Cornelia Froebass (Erika), Mario David (Caruso), O.E. Hasse (Drunken Passenger), Guy Bedos (the Stutterer)
Le Petit théâtre de Jean Renoir (1969) France Production Company: Son et Lumière, RAI, Bavaria, ORTF Producer: Pierre Long Production Manager: Robert Paillardon Screenplay: Jean Renoir Production Design: Gilbert Margerie Photography (colour): Georges Leclerc, assistants Antoine Georgiakis, Georges Liron Sound: Guy Rolphe Music: Jean Wiener (Le Dernier réveillon, Le Roi d'Yvetot), Joseph Kosma (La Cireuse électrique) Song: “Quand l'amour meurt” by Octave Crémieux Editor: Geneviève Winding Cast: Le Dernier réveillon: Nino Formicola and Milly-Monti (Tramps), Roland Bertin (Gontran), Robert Lombard (Maître d'); La Cireuse électrique: Marguerite Cassan (Emilie), Pierre Olaf (Gustave), Jacques Dynam (Jules), Jean-Louis Tristan (Salesman); Quand l'amour meurt: Jeanne Moreau (Singer); Le Roi d'Yvetot: Fernand Sardou (Duvallier), Françoise Arnoul (Isabelle), Jean Carmet (Feraud), Dominique Labourier (Paulette)
OTHER CREDITS Films featuring Renoir or his work, or in which he had a major involvement:
Catherine (1924) France Director: Albert Dieudonné Production Company: Films Jean Renoir Distribution: Pierre Braunberger (1927, re-edited and released under the title Une Vie sans joie) Screenplay: Jean Renoir Photography: Jean Bachelet, Alphonse Gibory Cast: Catherine Hessling (Catherine Ferrand), Louis Gauthier (Georges Mallet), Maud Richard (Mme. Mallet, his wife), Eugénie Naud (Mme. Laisné, his sister), Albert Dieudonné (Maurice Laisné, his nephew), Pierre Lestringuez, dit Philippe (Adolphe), Pierre Champagne (the Mallets' son), Jean Renoir (sub-prefect).
La P'tite Lili (1927) France Director: Alberto Cavalcanti, Production Company/Distribution: Néo—Film Producer: Pierre Braunberger Screenplay: Alberto Cavalcanti, from a song by Eugène Gavel and Louis Benech Photography: Jimmy Rogers Production Design: Erik Aaes Music: Darius Milhaud (1930 version) Editor: Marguerite Houlé Cast: Catherine Hessling (La P'tite Lili), Jean Renoir (Pimp), Guy Ferrand (Singer), Roland Cailloux (Concierge), Jean Storm (Minister), Dido Freire (the Little Cousin), Alain Renoir (trespasser)
Le Petit chaperon rouge (Little Red Riding Hood) (1929) France
Director: Alberto Cavalcanti, Producer: Jean Renoir Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Alberto Cavalcanti, from the story by Charles Perrault Photography: Marcel Lucien, René Ribault; Camera Operator: Jimmy Rogers; Assistant: Eli Lotar Editor: Marguerite Houlé Assistant Directors: Pierre Prévert and André Cerf Cast: Catherine Hessling (Little Red Riding Hood), Jean Renoir (the Wolf), André Cerf (Notary), Pierre
Prévert (a little girl and other parts), Pablo Quevado (Young Man), Marcel la Montagne (Farmer), Odette Talazac (Farmer's Wife), William Aguet (old Englishwoman), Aimée Tedesco dit Amy Wells (newspaper seller)
Die Jagd nach dem Gluck (1930) Germany Directors: Rochus Gliese, Carl Koch, Production Company: Comenius Film GmbH Distribution: Deutscher Wenkfilm GmbH Screenplay: Lotte Reiniger, Carl Koch, Rochus Glieser from an idea by Lotte Reiniger and Alex Strasser Photography: Fritz Arno Wagner Sets: Rochus Gliese, Arno Richter Shadow Theatre Effects: Lotte Reiniger, assisted by Carl Koch and Berthold Bartosch Music: Théo Mackeben Editor: Marguerite Houlé Cast: Cathenine Hessling (Aimée), Jean Renoir (Robert, a businessman), Alexander Murski (Marquand, a pedlar), Berthold Bartosch (Mario), Aimée Tedesco dit Amy Wells (Jeanne) (This seems to be a lost film).
The Spanish Earth (1937) U.S.A. Director: Joris Ivens Production Company: Contemporary Historians, Inc. Distribution (U.S.A.): Prometheus Pictures; France: Ciné-Liberté Script: Joris Ivens Photography: John Ferno (Fernhout), Joris Ivens Editor: Helen van Dongen Music: Marc Blitzstein, Virgil Thompson, after Spanish folk music Sound: Irving Reis Commentary: written and spoken by Ernest Hemingway. Renoir wrote and spoke the commentary for the French version (Terre d'Espagne), which, apparently, is now lost.
La Tosca (1940) Italy Director: Carl Koch (started by Renoir), Production Company/Distribution: Era-Scalera Films Producer: Arturo Ambrosio Assisatnt Director: Luchino Visconti Screenplay: Allesandro De Stefani, Carl Koch, Jean Renoir, Luchino Visconti, from the play by Victorien Sardou Photography: Ubaldo Arata Production Design: Gustavo Abel, Amleto Bonetti Sound: Piero Cavazzuti Music: Giacomo Puccini Editor: Gino Betrone Cast: Imperio Argentina (Tosca), Michel Simon (Scarpia), Rossano Brazzi (Mario Cavaradossi)
L'Album de famille de Jean Renoir (1956) France Director: Roland Gritti Production Company: Paris Télévision, then Franco-London Films Distributor: Cinédis Script: Pierre Desgraupes Photography: Jean Tournier Cast (as themselves): Jean Renoir, Pierre Desgraupes
Jean Renoir: le patron (1967) Dir: Jacques Rivette, France 1. La Recherche du relatif 2. La Direction des acteurs 3. La Règle et l'exception Production company: O.R.T.F. Producers: Janine Bazin and André S. Labarthe Photography: Pierre Mareschal Sound: Guy Solignac
Edited by Jean Eustache Also featuring Marcel Dalio, Pierre Braunberger and Catherine Rouvel. Three three feature-length films featuring Renoir and his work, made for the television series Cinéastes de notre temps. Part 2 was not broadcast, because Renoir's conversation with Michel Simon was judged too “racy”!
La Direction d'acteur par Jean Renoir (1968) France Director: Gisèle Braunberger Producer: Pierre Braunberger Production Manager: Roger Fleytoux Photography: Edmond Richard Sound: René Forget Editor: Mireille Maubena Cast (as themselves): Jean Renoir, Gisèle Braunberger Jean Renoir directs actress Gisèle Braunberger in rehearsals of a text he has adapted from Rumer Godden's story Breakfast at the Nikolaïdes, using the “Italian Method”.
Louis Lumière (1967) France Director: Eric Rohmer Production Company: O.R.T.F. in the series Allez au cinéma Cast (as themselves): Henri Langlois and Jean Renoir This is the film which inspired the polemical lecture about film history which Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Léaud) delivers to fellow members of the collective in Godard's La Chinoise (1967): “There's a false idea going the rounds concerning newsreels in the cinema... people say it was Lumière who invented newsreels, that he made documentaries, whilst, at the same time, there was another guy called Méliès, and everybody says about him that he made fiction, that he was a dreamer, that he filmed ghosts, optical illusions. I think it was precisely the opposite... A couple of days ago, at the Cinémathèque, I saw a film on Lumière by Monsieur Henri Langlois... And this film proved that Lumière was a painter, which is to say that he filmed... exactly the same things as were being painted by the painters of his time, people like Picasso, Manet or Renoir... He filmed stations, public gardens, people coming out of factories... people playing cards, tramways... Méliès filmed... a trip to the moon, the visit of the King of Yugoslavia to President Fallières... and now, with the passage of time, one can see that these are really the newsreels of the era... O.K., maybe as he did them they were reconstructed newsreels, and I'll go even further: I would say that Méliès was a Brechtian...” (my translation) The visual quality of the Lumière material is a revelation.
The Christian Licorice Store (1971) U.S.A. Director: James Frawley Production Company: National General Pictures Producers: Michael S. Laughlin, James Frawley Dsirtibution: Cinema Center Films Photography (color): David Butler Music: Lalo Schifrin Cast: Beau Bridges, Maud Adams, Gilbert Roland and (as themselves) Jean and Dido Renoir.
Jean Renoir (1993) U.K. Director: David Thompson Production Company/Distributor: Omnibus, BBC TV Two one-hour films on Renoir and his work.
Un Tournage à la campagne (1994) France A revealing compilation (by Alain Fleischer) of out-takes from the shooting of Une Partie de campagn, illustrating, amongst other things, the subtle changes in lines of dialogue from one take to another, the result of the actors being encouraged to improvise.
Renoir in the Theatre:
Jules César (Julius Caesar), France 1954
Adaptation of Shakespeare's play by Grisha Dabat and Mitsou Dabat Director: Jean Renoir. Producer: Philippe Decharte: Production Manager: Jean Serge Music: Beethoven's Fifth Symphony Cast: Paul Meurisse (Brutus), Jean-Pierre Aumont (Marc Anthony), Henri Vidal (Julius Caesar), Yves Robert (Cassius), Loleh Bellon (Portia), Françoise Christophe ( Calpurnia), Jean Parédès (Casca), Jean Topart (Octavius Caesar), Gaston Modot (Ligarius), Henri-JacquesHuet (Flavius), Jaque-Catelain (Decius), François Vibert (soothsayer). A gala production, staged for a single night in the Roman Arena in Arles to celebrate the 2000
th. anniversary
of the foundation of the city by Julius Caesar.
Orvet, France 1955 An original play in three acts by Jean Renoir. Director: Jean Renoir Producer: Jean Dercante General Manager: Alex Desbiolles Sets: Georges Wakhevitch Scene Painting: Laverdet Costumes: Barbara Karinska, Givenchy Music: Joseph Kosma Lighting Albert Richard Technical Assistant: Robert Petit Stage manager: Maurice Fraigneau Cast: Leslie Caron (Orvet), Paul Meurisse (Georges), Michel Herbault (Olivier), Catherine Le Couey (Mme. Camus), Raymond Bussières (Coutant), Jacques Jouanneau (William), Marguerite Cassan (Clotilde), Yorick Royan (Berthe), Suzanne Courtal (Mère Vipère), Pierre Olaf (Phillipe-le-pod-bot), Georges Saillard (Doctor), Georges Hubert (First Huntsman), Henry Charret (Second Huntsman). Written for Leslie Caron.
Le Grand couteau (The Big Knife), France 1957
Translation and adaptation by Jean Renoir of the play by his friend Clifford Odets, which had been filmed in 1955 by Renoir's former assistant Robert Aldrich. Director: Jean Serge Film Sequence with Daniel Gélin shot by Jean Renoir, Sets: Fred Givone Lighting: Hughes Pinneux Stage Manager: Georges Frémeuax Cast: Daniel Gélin (Charles Castle), Claude Génia (Marion Castle), Paul Bernard (Marcus Hoff), Paul Cambo (Smiley Coy), France Delahalle (Patty Benedicte), Vera Norman (Dixie Evans), Teddy Bilis (Nat), Andrea Parisy (Connie Bliss), François Marie (Buddy Bliss), Robert Montcade (Hank Teagle), Andrès Wheatley (Russell), Jacques Dannoville (Gardener)
Carola, U.S.A. 1960 Translation from French and adaptation by Jean Renoir, Robert Goldsby and Angela Goldsby of Renoir's original three act play Director: Jean Renoir Assistant Director: Robert Goldsby Sets: John T. Dreier Costumes: Shan Slattery Technical Assistant: Herbert Schoeller Stage Manager: Larry Belling Cast: Deneen Peckinpah (Carola Janssen), Robert Martinson (General von Clodius), Eileen Coltrell (Mireille), Caroline Rosqui (Josette), Sydney Field (Campan), Dan Moore (Henri), David Grimsted (Colonel Kroll), James Tripp (Parmentier), Duke Stroud (Camille), Malcolm Green (Lieutenant Keller), Robert Phalen (First French Gestapo Member), Charles Head (Second French Gestapo Member), David Vilner (First German Military Policeman), Dan Rich (Second German Military Policeman), Tony Loeb & Cliff Ghames (Members of
the Gestapo), Jim Mantell & Lewis Brown (German Soldiers), Wendy Goodman, Shelia Ryan & Susan Brewer (Actresses), Miles Snyder & Stephen Vause (Actors). A new adaptation by James Bridges for Hollywood Television Theater was booadcast on 3 February, 1973, on WNET, New York, directed by Norman Lloyd. The cast included Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Albert Paulsen, Michael Sacks, Anthony Zerbe, Carmen Zapete and Douglas Anderson. The Production Designer was Eugène Lourié
Select Bibliography By Renoir, including transcripts of his finished films:
Orvet, Paris, Gallimard, 1955
Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (continuity of the film), L'Avant-scène du cinéma, 1961
Renoir: My Father, London and Boston, Collins and Little Brown, 1962 (translation [by Randolph and Dorothy Weaver] of Pierre-August Renoir, mon père, Paris, Hachette, 1962)
Une Partie de campagne (continuity of the film), L'Avant-scène du cinéma, 1962 (published together with that of Vigo's Zéro de conduite)
Grand Illusion, London, Lorrimer, 1970, revised 1984 (a translation [by Marianne Alexandre and Andrew Sinclair] of the continuity of the film La Grand illusion, published by L'Avant-scène du cinéma, 1964)
The Rules of the Game, London, Lorrimer, 1970, revised 1984 (a translation [by John McGrath and Maureen Teitelbaum] of the continuity of the film La Règle du jeu published by L'Avant-scène du cinéma, 1965)
The Notebooks of Captain Georges, London and Boston, Collins and Little Brown, 1966 (translation [by Norman Denny] of Renoir's novel Les Cahiers du capitaine Georges, Paris, Gallimard, 1966)
My Life and My Films, London, Collins 1974 (a translation [by Norman Denny] of the director's memoirs: Ma Vie et mes films, Paris, Flammarion, 1974; this contains an account of the setting up of La Grande illusion)
Ecrits 1926-1971, Paris, Pierre Belfond, 1974 (Renoir's journalism and other writings collected by Claud
Gauteur)
La Chienne (continuity of the film), L'Avant-scène du cinéma, 1975
Carola (a play in three acts, complete text), L'Avant-scène du théâtre, 1976
Entretiens et propos, Cahiers du cinéma, 1979
Renoir on Renoir: Interviews, Essays and Remarks, translated by Carol Volk, Cambridge, New York, Port
Chester, Melbourne, Sydney, Cambridge University Press, 1989
Letters, edited by Lorraine Lo Bianco and David Thompson, translated by Craig Carison, Natasha Arnold, Michael Wells, Anneliese Varaldviev, London and Boston, Faber and Faber, 1994
La Coeur à l'aise, Paris, Flammarion, 1978, novel
Le Crime de l'anglais, Paris, Flammarion, 1979, novel
Geneviève, Paris, Flammarion, 1979, novel
Julienne et son amour and En avant, Rosalie !, Henri Veyrier, 1979, unproduced scripts Oeuvres de cinéma inédites, Paris, Les Cahiers du cinéma/Gallimard, 1982, synopses, treatments, découpages
On Renoir and his Films:
André Bazin (ed. by François Truffaut, from the notes left by Bazin on his death), Jean Renoir, Paris, Lebovici, 1989
Ronald Bergan, Jean Renoir, Projections of Paradise: a Biography, London, Bloomsbury, 1992
Richard Boston, Boudu Saved from Drowning (Boudu sauvé des eaux), London, BFI Classics, 1992, (recommended critical and contextual study of a much-loved film)
Bernard Chardère, Jean Renoir, Lyon, Premier Plan nos. 22, 23, 24, May 1962
Raymond Durgnat, Jean Renoir, London, Studio Vista, Cassell and Collier Macmillan, 1975 (a pioneering English-language study of the films; full of illuminating critical insights, despite many minor errors in its descriptions of the action)
Christopher Faulkner, Jean Renoir: A Guide to References and Resources, Boston, G.K. Hall, 1979 (contains a biographical chronology; a critical introduction to the films; a complete filmography; publication details and outline summaries of books and articles by and about Renoir, up to 1975)
Christopher Faulkner, The Social Cinema of Jean Renoir, Princeton, N.J. and Guildford, Princeton University
Press, 1986
Max Gaillard and Vincent Pinard (conception), Exposition Jean Renoir, Le Havre, L'Unité Cinéma de la Maison de la Culture du Havre and Centre d'Animation Culturelle Jean Renoir de Dieppe, 1982
Penelope Gilliatt (ed.), Jean Renoir: Essays, Conversations, Reviews, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1975
Pierre Guislain, La Règle du jeu: Jean Renoir, Paris, Hatier, 1990
James Leahy, "Image, Meaning, History... & the Voice of God", Vertigo, no. 4, Spring, 1994 (on La Vie est à nous, narration and March of Time)
James Leahy, "Is it on Video? The Angel and the Vampire", Vertigo, no. 5, Winter 1994-5 (on Le Crime de Monsieur Lange)
James Leahy, notes on Renoir, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange and French Cancan, published with the release of those films on video, London, Connoisseur Video, Spring 1996
James Leahy, "Jean Renoir", London, Encarta CD-ROM, Websters Microsoft International, 1998 and subsequent editions
Martin O'Shaughnessy, Jean Renoir, Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 2000
Alexander Sesonske, Jean Renoir: the French Films, 1924-1939, Cambridge Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 1980 (comprehensively researched critical account of the films, a mixture of the insightful and the pedestrian)
Gerry Turvey, "1936, the culture of the Popular Front and Jean Renoir", London, Academic Press, Media, Culture and Society, Vol.4, No.4, October 1982
Peter Wollen, "La Règle du jeu and Modernity", Film Studies, no.1, 1999
General Film:
J. Dudley Andrew, Mists of Regret, Princeton N.J., Princeton University Press, 1995
Mary Lea Bandy (ed.), Rediscovering French Film, New York, Museum of Modem Art, 1983 (an anthology of
important articles by film historians, critics and filmmakers; has a substantial bibliography)
Jacques B. Brunius, En Marge du cinéma français, Paris, Arcanes, 1954
Noël Burch, Theory of Film Practice, New York, Praeger, 1973 (this is a translation and revision, by the author, of Praxis du cinéma, Paris, Gallimard, 1969 and includes a major essay on Nana)
"Cinéma/Sound", special issue of Yale French Studies, New Haven, Conn., No. 60, 1980
Colin Crisp, French Classic Cinema, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1993
Goffredo Fofi, "The Cinema of the Popular Front in France (1934-38)", London, Society for Education in Film and Television, Screen, Vol.13, No.4, Winter 1972-3
John Gibbs, Mise-en-scène: Film Style and Interpretation, London and New York, Wallflower Press, 2002
Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, Paris, Collection des Cahiers du cinéma, Pierre
Belfond, 1968
Susan Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau (eds.), French Film: Texts and Contexts, London, Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1990
Susan Hayward, French National Cinema, London & New York, Routledge, 1993 (important, revealing and
well-researched account of the economic infrastructure of French filmmaking)
Norman King, Abel Gance: a Politics of Spectacle, London, BFI, 1984
Rémi Fournier Lanzoni, French Cinema: from its Beginnings to the Present, New York & London, Continuum 2002
James Leahy, "Historical Development of Cinema in France", London, Encarta CD-ROM, Websters Microsoft
International, 1997 and subsequent editions
James Leahy, "All in the Script? So Why Make the Movie?", Vertigo, Vol.2, No.2, 2002
Eugène Lourié, My Work in Films, San Diego, New York and London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985 (the memoirs of the production designer whose collaboration with Renoir lasted from Les Bas fonds through the Hollywood years to The River)
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen, Vol.16, No.3, Autumn 1975
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (d.), The Oxford History of World Cinema, Oxford and New York, Oxford University
Press, 1996
Gilberto Perez, The Material Ghost: Films and their Medium, Baltimore, Maryland, John Hopkins University
Press, 1998
V. I. Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting, New York, Grove Press, 1960
Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis, London, Starword, 2nd edition, 1992
David Thomson, Movie Man, New York, Stein and Day, 1967
David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, U.S.A. and U.K., Alfred A. Knopf and Little Brown,
2002
Ginette Vincendeau and Keith Reader (eds.), La Vie est à nous: French Cinema of the Popular Front 1935- 1938, London, National Film Theatre, BFI, 1986 (a collection of essays, some in translation, to introduce a major season of films at the National Film Theatre on the 50th anniversary of the election of the Popular Front government in France)
Alan Williams, Republic of Images, Cambridge, Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 1992
Non-Verbal Communication Systems:
Michael Argyle, The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour, Harmondswoth, Mx., Penguin Books, 1967
Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, St. Albans, Paladin, 1973 (essays on order and organisation in living systems, including discussions of non-verbal communication, and how these have been elaborated into complex forms of art)
Ray L. Birtwhistell, Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body-Motion Communication, U.S.A., University of Pennsylvania Press 1970 (pioneering scientific investigation of the systems now popularly known as “body language”)
Edward Hall, The Silent Language, New York, Fawcett World Library, 1966
(space considered not as a metaphor for human relationships, but as a major determinant of communicative and emotional interactions within and across cultures)
Edward Hall, The Hidden Dimension, New York, Doubleday Anchor, 1969 (introduction to proxemics, Hall's name for his pioneering scientific study of humanity's organisation and use
of space)
John Laver and Sandy Hutcheson (eds.), Communication in Face to Face Interaction, Harmondswoth, Mx.,
Penguin Books, 1972
Alan Lomax, “Choreometrics and Ethnographic Filmmaking”, Filmmaker's Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 4, February
1971. (Lomax's seminal account of the scientific study of dance patterns was brought to my attention by Nick Ray, his friend since the 1930s. We were sitting in Lomax's apartment, which Nick used to borrow when the owner was away for the weekend. Drawing on the ideas of some of the writers above, I was explaining that I believed that much of the power and poetry of Nick's films depended on their articulations of space and movement. The same is true of those of Renoir. Lomax's insights are relevant not only to documentary and ethnographic filmmakers, but to any analysis of how films communicate their meanings and generate their impact).
General:
John Berger and others, Ways of Seeing, London, BBC and Penguin Books, 1972 (based on the television series of the same name)
Tom Bishop, Pirandello and the French Theater, New York, New York University Press, 1960. (Includes short but effective discussions of Renoir's plays, and of The Golden Coach, plus an extract from a letter from
Renoir to the author affirming Pirandello's importance)
Guy de Maupassant, Une Partie de campagne, originally published in La Vie moderne (April 1881) and reprinted in the same year in the collection La Maison Tellier. The translation mentioned in the text appears in A Day in the Country and Other Stories, trans. David Coward, Oxford and New York, Oxford University
Press, 1990
Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education, Baltimore, Maryland and Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin Books, 1964 (a translation by Robert Baldick of L'Education sentimentale, Paris ,1869)
More Reno r soon
Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, London, Macmillan, 1989 (the second volume of the novelist's autobiography, which contains a full account of her friendship with Renoir, and their collaboration on The River whilst the film was being written in California then shot on location in Bengal)
L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between, London, Penguin Books, 1997 (first published 1953)
Herbert R. Lottman, The Left Bank: Writers, Artists and Politics from the Popular Front to the Cold War, London, Heinemann, 1982.
John Northam, Ibsen's Dramatic Method: a Study of the Prose Plays, London, Faber and Faber 1953 (a study of the dramatist's use, as revealed by his stage directions, of the elements of staging [costume, sets, props, lighting, movement, physical appearance] to generate poetic and dramatic impact, and to articulate his themes)
Donald Posner, "The Swinging Women of Watteau and Fragonard", Art Bulletin LXIV, March 1982
i A Look at Layout