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Portrait of Jean Renoir

Film · European

Jean Renoir

1894–1979 · French (later also American)

Poetic realism; French humanist cinema

Jean Renoir, second son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, directed more than forty films over five decades and made two that regularly top lists of the greatest ever: a prisoner-of-war film about the dissolving of the old European order and a country-house comedy savaged on release and rediscovered as a masterpiece. His deep focus, restlessly moving camera and refusal to judge his characters made him the hero of the Cahiers du cinéma critics.

How to spot them

  • ▸Son of the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir; water, picnics and dappled light
  • ▸Deep focus and long, wandering takes years before Citizen Kane
  • ▸'Everyone has their reasons' — the line from The Rules of the Game, in which he acts the part of Octave
  • ▸The idol of Truffaut, Godard and the New Wave critics; 'the boss', as Truffaut called him
  • ▸A wartime exile in Hollywood from 1940, then an Indian and Italian late period

Key films

French officers in a German prison camp; an aristocratic commandant in white gloves shoots his opposite number and then cuts his only geranium (1937)

La Grande Illusion — the first film in a language other than English nominated for the Best Picture Oscar

A weekend shooting party at a country château, a slaughterous rabbit hunt, and a chase through the corridors in fancy dress (1939)

The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) — jeered and cut on release, later restored and ranked among the greatest films ever made

A tramp is fished out of the Seine by a bookseller who tries to reform him, and refuses to be reformed (1932)

Boudu Saved from Drowning (Boudu sauvé des eaux), with Michel Simon

A picnic on a riverbank, a girl on a swing, and a sudden storm; abandoned in 1936 and released ten years later at forty minutes long (1946)

A Day in the Country (Partie de campagne), after Maupassant

A meek cashier, a woman called Lulu and her pimp; a painter's Paris and a murder (1931)

La Chienne — remade by Fritz Lang as Scarlet Street

An English family growing up beside a great river in Bengal; the director's first film in colour (1951)

The River — shot in India, and a formative influence on Satyajit Ray

A travelling actress in colonial Peru is courted by a viceroy, a bullfighter and a soldier, and given a gilded carriage (1952)

The Golden Coach (Le Carrosse d'or), with Anna Magnani

A Montmartre impresario rebuilds a dance hall and revives the can-can (1955)

French Cancan, with Jean Gabin

Key ideas

  • 'The awful thing about life is this: everyone has their reasons' — sympathy extended to every character
  • Deep focus and the long take let the viewer choose where to look, rather than being told by cutting
  • Theatre and life bleed into one another; masks, plays-within-films and fancy dress recur

Quick-fire facts

  • •He was the second son of the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and grew up as a model in his father's paintings
  • •He served in the First World War, was wounded in the leg, and then flew as a reconnaissance airman
  • •He plays Octave, the awkward hanger-on, in The Rules of the Game
  • •The Rules of the Game was cut, withdrawn and then damaged in the war; a near-complete version was reconstructed in 1959
  • •He left for the United States in 1940 and became an American citizen in 1946
  • •Jean Gabin, Michel Simon and Erich von Stroheim were among his great screen collaborators
  • •He received an Honorary Academy Award in 1975 for his lifetime contribution to the art of film
  • •His memoir is My Life and My Films (1974); he also wrote a book about his father, Renoir, My Father

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources