Son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean Renoir was born in Paris in 1894 and died a naturalized U.S. citizen in Beverly Hills in 1979. During a career stretching from 1924 to 1970, Renoir directed over 40 films encompassing a wide variety of subjects, a rich body of work that has had an enduring influence on cinema universally and on French directors in particular.  Embraced as the spiritual father of the New Wave by the young Cahiers du cinéma critics turned filmmakers, his voice can be heard in many of that period's most important films, among them Jules and Jim, Stolen Kisses, Pierrot le fou, and Celine and Julie Go Boating.

As a young man in 1920s Paris, Renoir was exposed to the avant-garde films made by artists and inspired by their experiments with the medium. With the coming of sound, a time when most films were dialogue-driven and directors relied on cuts and close-ups to create drama, Renoir was composing long takes that allowed him to reveal his characters through their physical interaction in real time, and to connect them visually to the larger world. A consummate technician, Renoir peppered his work with bravura passages of pure filmmaking, and his films still vibrate with the intensity of the moment.

By the late '30s Renoir had two popular hits, Grand Illusion and La bête humaine, both starring Jean Gabin, and one legendary flop: The Rules of the Game, a film ridiculed by the audience at its Paris opening, cut and recut by the producers, and finally withdrawn from exhibition to remain unseen for 20 years. Despondent over the failure of his most ambitious film and concerned for his safety in Nazi-occupied France, Renoir and his wife, armed with a US visa courtesy of documentarian Robert Flaherty, sailed from Marseille to New York City bound for Hollywood. Under contract to Fox, Renoir overcame the objections of Daryl F. Zanuck and shot Swamp Water on location in Georgia; but despite the film's success, his first studio job made him wary of "the industry." Four more films followed, the most notable being the independently produced The Southerner, which earned Renoir an Oscar nomination for Best Director, but his final endeavor, RKO's The Woman on the Beach, was released in a cut version and failed miserably. Acknowledging that neither his sensibility nor his talent was compatible with the studio system, Renoir opened a third chapter in his career when he travelled to India in 1949 to direct The River. Shot in breathtaking color by his nephew Claude Renoir, this film set the stage for French Cancan, The Golden Coach, and Elena et les hommes, three films that explore the relationship between life and art while demonstrating Renoir's effortless command of cinematic artifice.

An empathy with loners and social misfits, the use of documentary in a fictional film, a preference for naturalism over melodrama, an openness to improvisation by the actors, and a love for the theatrical tradition: are all hallmarks of a Renoir film. Flowing through and uniting all Renoir's films are two branches of one magisterial theme: the struggle for freedom, and the struggle to find one's place in the group. It has been remarked that there are no villains in Renoir, that in the words of Octave/Renoir in The Rules of the Game, "everyone has their reasons." Renoir's genius as a filmmaker and his measure as a man is that he can communicate the joy of living while depicting the forces that threaten it.

Featured Works:

Nana (1926); La Chienne (1931); Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932); Toni (1935); A Day in the Country (1936); Grand Illusion (1937); La Bête humaine (1938); La Marseillaise (1938); The Rules of the Game (1939, pictured); Swamp Water (1941); The Southerner (1945); Diary of a Chambermaid (1946); The Woman on the Beach (1947); The River (1951); The Golden Coach (1952); French Cancan (1954); Elena et les homes (1956); The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (1959); The Elusive Corporal (1962)

Program information:

The Films of Jean Renoir