Jean Renoir (French:[ʁənwaʁ]; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French filmmaker, actor, producer and author. HisLa Grande Illusion (1937) andThe Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made.[1] In 2002, he was ranked fourth on theBFI'sSight & Sound poll of the greatest directors. Among numerous honours accrued during his lifetime, he received a Lifetime AchievementAcademy Award in 1975. Renoir was the son of the painterPierre-Auguste Renoir and the uncle of the cinematographerClaude Renoir. With Claude, he madeThe River (1951), the first color film shot inIndia. A lifelong lover of theater, Renoir turned to the stage forThe Golden Coach (1952) andFrench Cancan (1955). He was one of the first filmmakers to be known as anauteur; the criticPenelope Gilliatt said a Renoir shot could be identified "in a thousand miles of film."[2][3][4][5]
Pauline Kael wrote that "At his greatest, Jean Renoir expresses the beauty in our common humanity—the desires and hopes, the absurdities and follies, that we all, to one degree or another, share."[6] PerThe New York Times: "The style that ran through Mr. Renoir's films — a mixture of tenderness, irony and Gallic insouciance‐was caught in a famous line from his 1939 masterpiece,The Rules of the Game. It was spoken by Octave, played by the director himself: 'You see, in this world, there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons.'”[5]
Renoir was born in theMontmartre district of Paris, France. He was the second son ofAline (née Charigot) Renoir andPierre-Auguste Renoir, theImpressionist painter. His elder brother wasPierre Renoir, a French stage and film actor, and his younger brother Claude Renoir (1901–1969) had a brief career in the film industry, mostly assisting on a few of Jean's films.[citation needed] Jean Renoir was also the uncle ofClaude Renoir (1913–1993), the son of Pierre, acinematographer who worked with Jean Renoir on several of his films. He recalls that "I discoveredAlexandre Dumas when I was about ten. I am still discovering him."[7]
Renoir was largely raised byGabrielle Renard, his nanny and his mother's cousin, with whom he developed a strong bond. Shortly before his birth, she had come to live with the Renoir family.[8] She introduced the young boy to theGuignol puppet shows in Montmartre, which influenced his later film career. He wrote in his 1974 memoirsMy Life and My Films, "She taught me to see the face behind the mask and the fraud behind the flourishes. She taught me to detest the cliché."[9] Gabrielle was also fascinated by the newearly motion pictures, and when Renoir was only a few years old she took him to see his first film.
As a child, Renoir moved to the south of France with his family. He and the rest of the Renoir family were the subjects of many of his father's paintings. His father's financial success ensured that the young Renoir was educated at fashionableboarding schools, from which, as he later wrote, he frequently ran away.[10]
At the outbreak ofWorld War I, Renoir was serving in the French cavalry. Later, after receiving a bullet in his leg, he served as areconnaissance pilot.[11] His leg injury left him with a permanent limp, but allowed him to develop his interest in the cinema, since he recuperated with his leg elevated while watching films, including the works ofCharlie Chaplin,D.W. Griffith and others.[12][13] After the war, Renoir followed his father's suggestion and tried makingceramic art, but he soon set that aside to make films in the attempt, he would later claim, to make his wife, Hessling, a star.[14] He was particularly inspired byErich von Stroheim's work.[15][16]
In 1924, Renoir directedUne Vie Sans Joie orCatherine, the first of his nine silent films, most of which starred his first wife,Catherine Hessling, who was also his father's last model.[17] At this stage, his films did not produce a return. Renoir gradually sold paintings inherited from his father to finance them.[18]
During the 1930s Renoir enjoyed great success as a filmmaker. In 1931 he directed his firstsound films,On purge bébé (Baby's Laxative) andLa Chienne (The Bitch).[19] The following year he madeBoudu Saved from Drowning (Boudu sauvé des eaux), a farcical sendup of the pretensions of a middle-class bookseller and his family, who meet with comic, and ultimately disastrous, results when they attempt to reform a vagrant played byMichel Simon.[20] In 1934, he filmed an adaptation ofGustave Flaubert'sMadame Bovary (1857). His 1935 filmToni, shot on locations with a nonprofessional cast, was later an influence on theFrench New Wave.[5]
In 1937, he madeLa Grande Illusion, one of his best-known films, starringErich von Stroheim andJean Gabin. A film on the theme of brotherhood, relating a series of escape attempts by FrenchPOWs during World War I, it was enormously successful. It was banned in Germany, and later in Italy, after having won the Best Artistic Ensemble award at theVenice Film Festival.[23] It was the first foreign language film to receive a nomination for theAcademy Award for Best Picture. In 1938, the Nazis disrupted a showing ofLa Grande Illusion. Renoir reflected, "This is a story that fills me with real pride."[5]
In 1939, able to co-finance his own films,[25] Renoir madeThe Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu), asatire on contemporary French society with an ensemble cast.[26] Renoir played the character Octave, who serves to connect characters from different social strata.[27] The film was his greatest commercial failure,[28] met with derision by Parisian audiences at its premiere. He extensively reedited the work, but without success at the time.[29]
A few weeks after the outbreak ofWorld War II, the film was banned by the government. Renoir was a known pacifist and supporter of theFrench Communist Party, which made him suspect in the tense weeks before the war began.[30] The ban was lifted briefly in 1940, but after the fall of France that June, it was banned again.[31] Subsequently, the original negative of the film was destroyed in anAllied bombing raid.[31] It was not until the 1950s that French film enthusiasts Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand, with Renoir's cooperation, reconstructed a near-complete print of the film.[32][33] Since that time,The Rules of the Game has been reappraised and has frequently appeared near the top of critics' polls ofthe best films ever made.[34][35]
A week after the disastrous premiere ofThe Rules of the Game in July 1939, Renoir went to Rome withKarl Koch and Dido Freire, subsequently his second wife, to work on the script for afilm version ofTosca.[36][37] At the age of 45, he became a lieutenant in the French Army Film Service. He was sent back to Italy, to teach film at theCentro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, and resume work onTosca.[36][38][39] TheFrench government hoped this cultural exchange would help maintain friendly relations with Italy, which had not yet entered the war.[36][38][40] He abandoned the project to return to France and make himself available for military service in August 1939.[41][42][43]
In 1949 Renoir traveled to India to shootThe River (1951), his first color film.[62] Based on the novel of the same name byRumer Godden, the film is both a meditation on human beings' relationship with nature and acoming of age story of three young girls incolonial India.[63] The film won the International Prize at theVenice Film Festival in 1951.[64]
Renoir made his next films with techniques adapted from live television.[68]Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Picnic on the Grass, 1959), starring Paul Meurisse andCatherine Rouvel, was filmed on the grounds of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's home inCagnes-sur-Mer, andLe Testament du docteur Cordelier (The Testament of Doctor Cordelier, also 1959), starringJean-Louis Barrault, was made in the streets of Paris and its suburbs.[69][70]
Renoir's penultimate film,Le Caporal épinglé (The Elusive Corporal, 1962), withJean-Pierre Cassel andClaude Brasseur,[71] is set among French POWs during their internment in labor camps by the Nazis during World War II. The film explores the twin human needs for freedom, on the one hand, and emotional and economic security, on the other.[72][73]
Renoir's loving memoir of his father,Renoir, My Father (1962) describes the profound influence his father had on him and his work.[74] As funds for his film projects were becoming harder to obtain, Renoir continued to write screenplays for income. He published a novel,The Notebooks of Captain Georges, in 1966.[75][76]Captain Georges is the nostalgic account of a wealthy young man's sentimental education and love for apeasant girl, a theme also explored earlier in his filmsDiary of a Chambermaid andPicnic on the Grass.[77]
Renoir's last film isLe Petit théâtre de Jean Renoir (The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir), released in 1970.[78] It is a series of three short films made in a variety of styles. It is, in many ways, one of his most challenging, avant-garde and unconventional works.[79][80]
Unable to obtain financing for his films and suffering declining health, Renoir spent his last years receiving friends at his home in Beverly Hills, and writing novels and his memoirs.[81]
In 1973 Renoir was preparing a production of his stage play,Carola, withLeslie Caron andMel Ferrer when he fell ill and was unable to direct. The producerNorman Lloyd, a friend and actor inThe Southerner, took over the direction of the play. It was broadcast in the series programHollywood Television Theater on WNET, Channel 13, New York on 3 February 1973.[82]
Renoir's memoir,My Life and My Films, was published in 1974. He wrote of the influence exercised byGabrielle Renard, his nanny and his mother's cousin, with whom he developed a mutual lifelong bond. He concluded his memoirs with the words he had often spoken as a child, "Wait for me, Gabrielle."[83]
In 1975 Renoir received a lifetimeAcademy Award for his contribution to the motion picture industry. That same year a retrospective of his work was shown at theNational Film Theatre in London.[84] Also in 1975, the government of France elevated him to the rank of commander in theLégion d'honneur.[85]
"His work unfolds as if he had devoted his most brilliant moments to fleeing the masterpiece, to escape any notion of the definite and the fixed, so as to create a semi-improvisation, a deliberately 'open' work that each viewer can complete for himself, comment on as it suits him, approach from any side."
According toDavid Thomson, Renoir was "the model of humanist cinema, an informal genre that includedFrank Capra,Vittorio De Sica,Satyajit Ray,Yasujirō Ozu or evenCharlie Chaplin."[110] InThe New Biographical Dictionary of Film, he writes: "Renoir asks us to see the variety and muddle of life without settling for one interpretation. He is the greatest of directors, he justifies cinema ... InRenoir, My Father and in his own autobiography,My Life and My Films, Jean clearly adopts his father's wish to float on life like a cork. That same stream carries Boudu away to freedom, wrinkles with pain at the end ofPartie de campagne, overflows and engenders precarious existence inThe Southerner, and is meaning itself inThe River:
^O'Shaughnessy, Martin; O'Shaughnessy, Professor of Film Studies Martin (20 October 2000).Jean Renoir. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 14.ISBN9780719050633.OCLC606344172.
^ab"Jean Renoir".awardsdatabase.oscars.org. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved4 January 2023.1974 (47th) HONORARY AWARD To Jean Renoir – a genius who, with grace, responsibility and enviable devotion through silent film, sound film, feature, documentary and television, has won the world's admiration.
^Arnold, Edward T. and Miller, Eugene, L. (1986).The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich. University of Tennessee Press. Knoxville, Tennessee.ISBN0-87049-504-6, p.7.
^Rège, Philippe (2010).Encyclopedia of French Film Directors. Vol. 1,A–M. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press. p. 68.ISBN9780810861374.
^Pinel, Vincent (2006).Cinéma français. Paris: Éditions Cahiers du Cinéma. pp. 145–147.ISBN9782866423834.
^Mérigeau, Pascal (2016).Jean Renoir. Burbank, CA: RatPac Press. p. 78.ISBN9780762456086.
^Renoir, Jean (1974).My Life and My Films. Translated by Denny, Norman. London: Collins. pp. 88–90.ISBN0002167050.
Calais, Séverine.Catalogue des personnages de l'œuvre filmique de Jean Renoir(PDF) (in French). Université de Nancy 2.THESE Pour obtenir le grade de Docteur d'Université de Nancy 2 Doctorat nouveau régime Discipline Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication
