Everything about Jean Renoir totally explained
Jean Renoir (French ) (
September 15,
1894–
February 12,
1979), born in the
Montmartre district of
Paris,
France, was a
film director, actor and author. He was the second son of Aline Charigot and the French painter
Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He was also the brother of
Pierre Renoir, a noted French stage and film actor; the uncle of
Claude Renoir, a
cinematographer; and the father of
Alain Renoir, a professor emeritus of
comparative literature at the
University of California at Berkeley.
As a film director and actor, he made over 40 films from the
silent era to the end of the 1960s. As an author, he wrote the definitive biography of his father,
Renoir, My Father (1962).
Early life and career
When Jean Renoir was a child, he moved with his family to the south of France. 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 fashionable
boarding schools which, as he later wrote, he was continually running away from.
At the outbreak of
World War I Renoir was serving in the French cavalry. Later, after receiving a bullet in his leg, he served as a reconnaissance pilot. His leg injury left him with a permanent limp, but allowed him to discover the cinema, where he used to recuperate with his leg elevated while watching the films of
Charlie Chaplin and others. After the war, Renoir followed his father's suggestion and tried his hand at making
ceramics, but he soon set that aside in order to make films, inspired by
Erich von Stroheim's work.
In 1924, Renoir directed the first of his nine silent films, most of which starred his first wife, who was also his father's last model,
Catherine Hessling. At this stage his films didn't produce a return, and Renoir gradually sold paintings inherited from his father to finance them.
International success in the 1930s
During the 1930s Renoir enjoyed great success as a filmmaker. In 1931 he directed his first
sound films,
On purge bébé and
La Chienne (
The Bitch). The following year he made
Boudu Saved From Drowning (
Boudu sauvé des eaux), which was strongly influenced by Chaplin's
Little Tramp character. Here,
Michel Simon, playing a vagrant, is rescued from the
River Seine and taken in by a bookseller. The materialist,
bourgeois milieu of the bookseller and his family is contrasted with the simple, happy-go-lucky personality of the tramp.
By the middle of the decade Renoir was associated with the
Popular Front, and several of his films, such as
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (
Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, 1935) and
La Vie Est a Nous (
People of France) (1936) reflect the movement's politics. In 1937 he made one of his most well-known films,
Grand Illusion (
La Grande Illusion), starring
Erich von Stroheim and the immensely popular
Jean Gabin. A
pacifist film about a series of escape attempts by French
POWs during World War I, the film was enormously successful but was also banned in
Germany, and later in
Italy after having won the "Best Artistic Ensemble" award at the
Venice Film Festival. This was followed by another cinematic success:
The Human Beast (
La Bête Humaine), a
film noir tragedy based on the novel by
Émile Zola and starring
Simone Simon and
Jean Gabin.
In 1939, now able to finance his own films, Renoir made
The Rules of the Game (
La Règle du Jeu), a
satire on contemporary French society with an ensemble cast. Renoir himself played the character Octave, a sort of master of ceremonies in the film. The film was greeted with derision by
Parisian audiences upon its premiere and was extensively reedited by his partner and editor Marguerite, on Renoir's behalf, but without success. It was his greatest commercial failure. A few weeks after the outbreak of
World War II, the film was banned. The ban was lifted briefly in 1940, but after the fall of France it was banned again, along with (
La Grande Illusion). Subsequently the original negative of the film was destroyed in an
Allied bombing raid. It wasn't until the 1950s that two French film enthusiasts, with Renoir's cooperation, were able to reconstruct a complete print of the film. Today
The Rules of the Game appears frequently near the top of critic's polls as one of
the best films ever made.
Hollywood years
A week after the disastrous premiere of
The Rules of the Game, Renoir went to Rome with his new partner Dido Freire, subsequently his second wife, to work on the script for a film version of
Tosca. This he abandoned to return to France just before the declaration of
World War II, to make himself available for military service. At the age of 45, he became a lieutenant in the Army Film Service, and was sent back to Italy, to teach film at the
Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in
Rome, and resume work on
Tosca. The
French government hoped that this cultural exchange would help to maintain friendly relations with Italy, which hadn't yet entered the war. When Germany invaded and occupied France in May 1940, however, he was recalled to France and then fled to the
United States, followed by Dido.
In
Hollywood, Renoir had difficulty finding projects that suited him. In 1943, he produced and directed an anti-
Nazi film set in France,
This Land Is Mine, starring
Maureen O'Hara and
Charles Laughton. Two years later, he made
The Southerner, a film about
Texas sharecroppers that's often regarded as his best work in America and one for which he was nominated for an
Academy Award for Directing.
In 1946, Renoir became a
naturalized citizen of the United States. In that year he made
Diary of a Chambermaid, an adaptation of the
Octave Mirbeau novel,
Le Journal d'une femme de chambre, starring
Paulette Goddard and
Burgess Meredith.
The Woman on the Beach (1947) starring
Joan Bennett and
Robert Ryan was heavily reshot and reedited after it fared poorly among preview audiences in
California. Both films were poorly received and were the last films Renoir made in America.
A Transatlantic Life
In 1949 Renoir traveled to
India and made
The River, his first color film. Based on the novel of the same name by
Rumer Godden, the film is both a meditation on human beings' relationship with nature and a
coming of age story of three young girls in
colonial India. The film won the International Prize at
Cannes Film Festival in 1951.
After returning to work in Europe, Renoir made a trilogy of
Technicolor musical comedies on the subjects of theater, politics and commerce:
Le Carrosse d'or (
The Golden Coach) (1953) with
Anna Magnani,
French CanCan with
Jean Gabin and
Maria Felix (1954) and
Eléna et les hommes (Elena and Her Men) with
Ingrid Bergman and
Jean Marais (1956). During the same period, Renoir produced in Paris the
Clifford Odets play,
The Big Knife, and wrote and produced in Paris for
Leslie Caron his own play,
Orvet.
Renoir's next films were made in 1959 using techniques Renoir adapted from live television at the time. The former was filmed on the grounds of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's home in
Cagnes-sur-Mer and the latter film was made in the streets of Paris and its suburbs.
In 1962 Renoir made what was to be his penultimate film,
Le Caporal épinglé (
The Elusive Corporal) with
Jean-Pierre Cassel and
Claude Brasseur. 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.
In 1962, Renoir published a loving memoir of his father,
Renoir, My Father, in which he described the profound influence his father had on him and his work. As funds for his film projects were becoming harder to obtain, Renoir continued to write screenplays and then wrote a novel,
The Notebooks of Captain Georges, published in 1966.
Captain Georges is the nostalgic account of an
aristocrat's sentimental education and love for a
peasant girl. The book continues the same theme explored earlier in the films
Diary of a Chambermaid and
Picnic on the Grass.
Last years
Renoir made his last film in 1969,
Le Petit théâtre de Jean Renoir (
The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir). In sympathy with the student demonstrations at the time, Renoir's original title for the film was
It's a Revolution! The film is a series of four short films made in a variety of styles with one unifying theme. In Renoir's words, "The pitcher goes so often to the well that eventually it breaks."
Thereafter, unable to find financing for his films and in declining health, Renoir spent the last years of his life receiving friends at his home in Beverly Hills and writing novels and his memoirs.
In 1973 Renoir was preparing a production of his stage play
Carola with
Leslie Caron and
Mel Ferrer when he fell ill and was unable to direct. The producer
Norman Lloyd, a friend and actor in
The Southerner, took over the direction of the play.
In his memoirs
My Life and My Films (1974) Renoir wrote of the influence exercised upon him by his cousin,
Gabrielle Renard, the woman seen in the portrait by his father above. Shortly before his birth, she came to live with the Renoir family, and helped raise the young Renard. She introduced him to the
Guignol puppet shows in the
Montmartre of his childhood: "[s]he taught me to see the face behind the mask and the fraud behind the flourishes", he wrote. He concluded his memoirs with the words he'd often spoken as a child, "Wait for me, Gabrielle."
In 1975 he received a lifetime
Academy Award for his contribution to the motion picture industry and that same year a retrospective of his work was shown at the
National Film Theatre in
London. In 1977, the government of France elevated him to the rank of commander in the
Legion of Honor.
Jean Renoir died in
Beverly Hills, California on
February 12,
1979. His body was returned to France and buried beside his family in the cemetery at
Essoyes,
Aube,
France.
Legacy
On his death, fellow director and friend
Orson Welles wrote an article for the
Los Angeles Times, "Jean Renoir: The Greatest of all Directors".
Jean Renoir has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6212 Hollywood Blvd. Several of his ceramics were collected by
Albert Barnes and can be found on display beneath his father's paintings at the
Barnes Foundation in
Merion, Pennsylvania.
Filmography
Selected Writings
Orvet, Gallimard 1955, play.
Renoir, Hachette 1962 (Renoir, My Father), biography.
Les Cahiers du Capitaine Georges, Gallimard 1966 (The Notebooks of Captain Georges), novel.
Ma Vie et mes Films, Flammarion 1974 (My Life and My Films), autobiography.
Ecrits 1926-1971 (Claude Gauteur, ed.), Pierre Belfond, 1974, writings.
Carola, in "L'Avant-Scène du Théatre" no. 597, November 1, 1976, screenplay.
Le Coeur à l'aise, Flammarion 1978, novel.
Julienne et son amour, Henri Veyrier 1978, screenplay.
Jean Renoir: Entretiens et propos (Jean Narboni, ed.), Editions de l'étoile/Cahiers du Cinéma 1979, interviews and remarks.
Le crime de l'Anglais, Flammarion 1979, novel.
Geneviève, Flammarion 1980, novel.
Œuvres de cinéma inédités (Claude Gauteur, ed.), Gallimard 1981, synopses and treatments.
Lettres d'Amerique (Dido Renoir and Alexander Sesonske, eds.), Presses de la Renaissance 1984, correspondence.
Renoir on Renoir: Interviews, Essays, and Remarks (Carol Volk, tr.), Cambridge University Press 1989.
Jean Renoir: Letters (David Thompson and Lorraine LoBianco, eds.), Faber & Faber 1994, correspondence.
Awards
Prix Louis Delluc, for Les Bas-Fonds (The Lower Depths), 1936
Chevalier de Légion d'honneur, 1936
International Jury Cup, Venice Biennale, for La Grande Illusion, 1937
New York Critics Award, for Swamp Water, 1941
Best Film, Venice Festival, for The Southerner, 1946
Venice Film Festival: International Award The River, 1951
Grand Prix de l'Academie du Cinéma for French Cancan, 1956
Prix Charles Blanc, Academie Française, for Renoir, My Father, biography of father, 1963
Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts, University of California, Berkeley, 1963
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1964
Osella d'Oro, Venice Festival, 1968
Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Royal College of Art, London
Special Oscar for Career Accomplishment, 1975
Commandeur de Légion d'honneur, 1977Further Information
Get more info on 'Jean Renoir'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://jean_renoir.totallyexplained.com">Jean Renoir Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
