TSPDT - Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir

Survey of Filmmakers: Top 25 Directors (2005 poll by The Film Journal)

Robin Buss' Top 10 Directors

Chris Fujiwara's Top 10 Directors

Kent Jones' Top 10 Directors

David Robinson's 5 Best Directors

Kenneth Turan's 5 Best Directors

►501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

See Also

Jacques Becker

Ingmar Bergman

Luis Buñuel

Marcel Carné

Julien Duvivier

Fritz Lang

Louis Malle

Lewis Milestone

Roberto Rossellini

Bertrand Tavernier

Jean Vigo

Luchino Visconti

Director / Screenwriter / Actor / Producer

1894 - 1979

Born September 15, Paris, France

Key Production Countries: France, USA

Key Genres: Drama, Comedy Drama, Romantic Drama, Comedy of Manners, Crime Drama, Psychological Drama, War Drama

Key Collaborators: Marguerite Renoir (Editor), Joseph Kosma (Composer), Eugene Lourie (Production Designer), Claude Renoir (Cinematographer/Producer), Gaston Modot (Character Player), Julien Carette (Leading Character Player), Jenny Helia (Character Player), Jean Gabin (Leading Player), Pierre Braunberger (Producer), Jean Bachelet (Cinematographer)

Highly Recommended: La Chienne (1931), Partie de campagne (1936), The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), La Bête humaine (1938), Rules of the Game (1939), The River (1951)

Recommended: Charleston Parade (1927), Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), La Grande illusion (1937), This Land is Mine (1943), The Southerner (1945), The Golden Coach (1952), French Cancan (1955), The Testament of Dr. Cordelier (1959), The Elusive Corporal (1962)

Links: [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Renoir Biography ] [ Strictly Film School ] [ Bright Lights Film Journal Article ] [ Wikipedia ] [ Films de France Profile ] [ Classic Film and Television Home Page ] [ jeanRenoir.com ] [ Boston Phoenix Article (1998) ] [ GreenCine Article (2007) ] [ EuroScreenwriters Article (From 1979) ]

Books: [ Jean Renoir (Bazin) ] [ Jean Renoir (French Film Directors) ] [ My Life and My Films ] [ Jean Renoir: Projections of Paradise ] [ Jean Renoir: Interviews ] [ Renoir on Renoir: Interviews, Essays, and Remarks ] [ Jean Renoir: The Complete Films ]

DVD's: [ Amazon ]

1,000 Greatest Films: La Chienne (1931), Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), Toni (1935), The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), Partie de campagne (1936), La Grande illusion (1937), La Bête humaine (1938), Rules of the Game (1939), The River (1951), The Golden Coach (1952), French Cancan (1955)

250 Quintessential Noir Films: The Woman on the Beach (1947)


	"Renoir's ouevre stands as a monument and a model of cinematography. By summoning the conditions of illusion and artifice of film, it rises out of the massive production of poetic realism of the 1930s in France. He develops a style that is the very tenor of a vehicle studying social contradiction. The films implicitly theorize the limits that cinema confronts in any narrative or documentary depiction of our world." - Tom Conley (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)

	"Renoir asks us to see the variety and muddle of life without settling for one interpretation. He is the greatest of all directors; he justifies cinema. But he shrugs off the weight of "masterpieces" or "definitive statements". The impossibility of grasping final solutions or perfect works is his "rule"." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)

	"His signature is discernible in the generous, unsentimental humanity, the assured evocation of milieu, an awareness of the transience of life and love, and a subtle realism whose deceptive simplicity is derived from unobtrusive artifice: deep focus, long takes, complex camera movements, elegant framing, and a wealth of telling incidental detail...He was unquestionably a master of cinema; the apparent effortlessness of his art only confirms his genius." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

	"The world's greatest film-maker." - François Truffaut

	"One of the great directors, Renoir combined a humanist view of the world with the use of deep focus shots, which enabled everything in a frame to be seen with clarity, thus enlarging the possibilities for action in each shot. This gave his films a richness of emotion and style few can match." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

	"A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again." - Jean Renoir