Jean Renoir : The Grand Reality

A son of painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean began directing in 1921. His great period was the 1930s. By mid-decade, while grim fascist dictatorships in three bordering countries thundered toward world war, his films began reflecting anti-fascist, anti-racist, socialist ideals. After his two greatest movies were banned in occupied France, he escaped to America.

The freedom Renoir allowed his actors, his love of location filming, and his missed deadlines made him unpopular with Hollywood’s studios. Though he became a U.S. citizen, he returned to filming, with less success, in France in the 1950s. By then Italian and Indian realism and France’s New Wave were strongly influenced by him. Movie lovers rejoice that his masterpiece The Rules Of The Game (1939) is now being rereleased in theaters. In 2022, as smogs of racist, anti-democracy, anti-human rights movements threaten America, Renoir’s clear-eyed realism and optimism are most welcome.

Program

1/4 LA CHIENNE (1931)
1/11 BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING (1932)
1/18 TONI (1935) at *9:30PM*
1/25 THE CRIME OF MONSIEUR LANGE (1936)
2/1 THE GRAND ILLUSION (1937)
2/8 LA BÊTE HUMAINE (1938) on 35mm (print from the Institut français)
2/15 THE RIVER (1953)
2/22 ELENA AND HER MEN (1956)
3/1 SWAMP WATER (1941) on 35mm