Jean Renoir inherited his acute feel for the poetry of landscapes -- from the famous Impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir, his father. Emotive impressions of place, captured by a slowly panning camera, underlie the movement of his narratives. Renoir's genius lay...
[more]Jean Renoir inherited his acute feel for the poetry of landscapes -- from the famous Impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir, his father. Emotive impressions of place, captured by a slowly panning camera, underlie the movement of his narratives. Renoir's genius lay in fusing environments and narratives together into a seamless whole.
Renoir had the luxury of growing up in a family that valued artistic creation. He was encouraged by his father (for whom he also modeled) to dabble in poetry and ceramics, but finally settled into filmmaking in the late 1920s. His first features, "La Fille de L'Eau" and "Nana," were rough-edged and unwieldly despite the occasional glimmer of Impressionist brilliance. 'Nana' in particular -- a loose adaptation of Zola's novel -- was a huge commercial flop that threatened to terminate Renoir's film career before it had even really begun. Forced to scale back his expenses, he resigned himself to less grandiose projects. His first real achievement was the charmingly fantastical "Little Match Girl" in 1928.
Comic satire emerges in Renoir's films of the '30s. Perhaps inspired by Flaubert (Renoir would eventually adapt "Madame Bovary"), he began to churn out films that mocked the petty indulgences of the French middle class. This endeavor was aided significantly by the innovation of sound; contrary to many filmmakers of his time, Renoir embraced sound enthusiastically, excited by its potential for use in social satire.
The result was his 1939 masterpiece "The Rules of the Game," which Renoir directed, produced, acted in, and wrote. This biting critique of pre-war French society managed to function as farce, drama, and tragedy all at once; it manifested Renoir's capacity to be both critic and heartfelt humanist. However, the film met with grave disapproval from the right wing; condemned as a "demoralizing" vision of France, it was severely cut. It wasn't until 1959 that Renoir's complete version was rediscovered and the full merit of the film finally recognized.
In the '40s Renoir moved to America and made a series of mediocre films. Unhappy with the scripts offered him and uncomfortable working in English, his output was notoriously poor. ("The Southerner," which successfully captured the feel of the rural American South, is an exception.) Of these years of his career, Renoir said, "They represent seven years of unrealized works and unrealized hopes, and seven years of deceptions too." Once he returned to Europe, his deftly plotted narratives and mood-setting natural environments returned too.
[show less]
