Jean Renoir - C or D?/S&D

As for search, obv. just about everything, though his work of the 1930s is no doubt the most important. It's important in part because Renoir was not just working as Jean Renoir in the accepted postwar auteur sense. The attitude and innovations of those films are inseperable from the political and cultural context of Popular Front and pre-Popular Front France. Many of Jean Renoir's collaborators, including his 2nd wife, were Leftists and many of the films--notably La vie est à nous and La Marseillaise--were made in tribute to the Popular Front vision of France. I tend to think of a group of people of which Renoir may have been the center, as the authors of those 1930s films. Some of those collaborators were Jean's relatives, from Marguerite (his wife and editor) to Claude (his nephew and producer, later cinematographer) to Alain (his brother, I believe, and an assistant cinematographer). Anyway that's how I think of those films...The Crime of M. Lange probably being the most daring--aesthetically and politically--after Rules of the Game (it justifies murder in the name of class solidarity).

It's silly to give short shrift to his postwar films. The River, French Cancan, and The Golden Coach are all brilliant. Interestingly Renoir abandoned the roving camera/long take style he pioneered in the 1930s; maybe his experience in Hollywood taught him to trust editing a bit more. Maybe he just wasn't as interested in pushing the boundaries in that sense anymore. The later films have Renoir's customary love of life and love for people, but they feel more resigned, less angry (by contast Bresson got more angry as he got older)....

Most of his 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s work is in circulation in the US but La nuit de carrefour (1932) is famously hard to see outside of France (never understood why), and the stuff from the 1920s (including Nana, and the films he made in the context of the French Impressionist Cinema movement like La fille de l'eau) is also hard to track down, although I have the wonderful Charleston on video.

Re. "Boudu," which I just watched again. The maid is so hott in a not-hot-but-HOTT way. The camera (or is that Boudu?) really seems interested in her ass. there are some incredible "profunder de champ" sequences here, especially utilizing the hallways and windows. the shots when the party is coming out of the water at the end look like they were shot with some kind of 1930s equiv. of a telephoto lens--the depth is squashed and the focus is really shaky.

Haha "Priapus Boudu"--this film is so DIRTY.

I like to think of this as Renoir's tribute to Showgirls.

http://filmsociety.wellington.net.nz/graphics/Boudu.gif

none of the reviews/critiques that i've read of the film seem to quite capture everything that's great about it. i love the way it's poised between the humanism that everyone associates with renoir and a very dark, pessimistic view of its characters. bits of it almost feel like a screwball comedy, which makes the final scene all the more shattering.

grand illusion isn't quite as good, i think - its themes are a little more straightforward and obvious. it's still a beautiful film, of course.

Has there ever been a greater anti-war film than La Grande Illusion?

Have you seen "La Horse" with Gabin? Is it any good? I'm intrigued since I love the stuff I've heard that Gainsbourg did for the soundtrack.

also the movie is on it and it is as always awesome. when lisette barks "un p'tit café avec pain, de beurre et de confiture!" to octave i always die!!

"such are the rules of the game! "

you should write a book on this film in which that is the full content of every other sentence.

it is kind of shittily designed tho, this dvd, visually i mean

"such are the rules of the game" sounds like a good phil ochs song too

french cancan
elena and her men
the golden coach

so thats what you have to look forward to!

It's strange, though -- it's an anti-war film, obviously, but it is a *muted* anti-war film, I think. It reveals its sentiments in bursts and moments (like Gabin's anguished explosion during his confinement in solitary or the halting conversation-via-mutually incomprehensible monologues between Gabin and Parlo towards the end). In ways I think this is because Renoir surely must have realized what for just about everyone was the obvious -- war is awful -- and therefore didn't want to make a simple diatribe on the fact.

Many different things to observe -- the presence of the black officer in the castle prison, the absolute control of body language throughout, Fresnay's impeccable correctness and lack of sentimentality. von Stroheim was my own particular revelation in that I'm more familiar with his reputation than his work as director or actor, and I suspected some kind of strutting overblown stereotype. But for all of the emotional and literal rigidity, no question of von Stroheim's subtlety and ease in the role, and he and his fellow German citizen (Parlo's character) are the two of the five major players to not find some sort of fulfillment or achieve a specific goal (the other three being Boldieu, Rosenthal and Marechal).

Beautiful film, indeed. Will definitely be searching for more.

that was really well-put, ned, especially the last paragraph.

this is a hallmark of renoir, really. his films--with a few exceptions--feel effortless, fast-paced, engrossing, very far from self-important. although that "effortlessness" was of course painstakingly achieved.

Nana de Jean Renoir (Format 1.33)
Bonus : Documentaire inédit et exclusif sur la période des années de Jean Renoir - Fin alternative - Galerie de photos - Bande annonce d’époque - L’édition du scénario de Nana tiré du roman de Zola par Pierre Lestringuez et Jean Renoir (120 pages)

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), June 22nd, 2004.

Well. Found the Criteirion set used two weeks back and watched the film itself tonight. Quite striking indeed. More thoughts tomorrow.

although i like the doc on the BFI dvd much better than the one on the criterion dvd

the david thompson thing was lame. on the BFI dvd there's a stylistic analysis by jean douchet which is pretty great

have you read his autobio?

Bunuel's autobiography is one of the greatest, funniest books ever written. Seriously.

Cla-cla-cla-cla-cla-cla-classic!!!

The latter seemed stilted and protracted in spots, but Renoir's point of view is fascinating: a Western writer/director so genuinely curious about a culture so alien to him that he risks looking foolish and "European". I kept thinking, "What would Edward Said say about THIS?"

Truly, this great director's guilelessness was astonishing -- certainly another virtue.

"crime of monsieur lange" is the one i'm going to rent next.

love l'atalante though--only saw that for the first time a couple of years ago, when i was in london, what an awesome movie

Elena et les hommes is minor, but the color on the Criterion disc is amazing, and Ingrid Bergman is often funny, esp in a scene where she's spinning and bouncing through a crowd of Batille Day parade watchers.

That's encouraging, cuz I've tried and failed to get any enjoyment from the later French productions.

Recently found a nice looking subtitled copy of "La Nuit du Carrefour" (sp?) via t*rr*nt. It is truly one of his most visually striking films and possibly his strangest. The lead actress was almost distractingly beautiful as well.

Woman on the Beach coming from Warner Archive

at last!

now we need Diary of a Chambermaid

lol @ anyone who voted for boudu saved from drowning on the ILX comedy thread.

It's a great, very amusing movie. (Didn't vote for it.)

i'm LOL'ing at myself b/c i did vote for it.

The DVD is sitting on my tv this minute. I've never seen it. One more bit of cultural literacy flug to pick out of the bottom of my pocket.

Watched La Bête Humaine tonight -- really enjoyed it, but don't have anything useful to say about it, except that Gabin and Simon are fantastic.

Gabin in the grass with the camera taking in the setting = wow

Speaking of Gabin and Simon, just saw Quai des Brumes/Port of Shadows, which just finished a brief run at the Film Forum. Run don't walk to see it if it comes to a theater near you.

Jean, in 1948, explains the grandeur of primitives: All arts that aren't “purely individual...are only great—really great—in their primitive state.”

(e.g. TV, 1950-80)

http://howlingwretches.blogspot.de/2013/09/renoir-grandeur-of-primitives.html

Buy Renoir, My Father, available in a NYROB edition. Lovely portraits of growing up with Pierre-Auguste in rural France during the years before the Great War.

Any opinions on The Southerner (1945)? I recorded it last night from TCM just because it's a Renoir, but don't know anything about it.

Bogdanovich opens his card file

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-jean-renoir-file-part-1-20150129

"opening Al Capone's vaults"

he's right about The Golden Coach.

yes. should be catching the Laughton movie here shortly.

i /like/ the golden coach, and whatever its flaws, it has among the greatest closing 30 seconds of any film i can think of.

should i be reading these "from the files of cap'n ascot"? are they interesting? bogdanovich just seems like a blowhard to me.

TGC is still beautiful, it's true; just not among 5 best Renoirs for me.

well, there's a heck of a lot of competition for those slots

btw did anna magnani's weight fluctuate wildly in true diva fashion? because i would swear if you see two movies with her in them, even if they were made a year apart, she looks vastly different

she had a lot of problems, i've read.

Saw the last 30 minutes of Grand Illusion last night on tcm. Dito Parlo is still my 3rd Bardo.

The Rules of the Game
La Bete Humaine
A Day in the Country
Grand Illusion
Diary of a Chambermaid

love of Michel Simon requires at least one of Boudu and La Chienne

Boudu just outside that top five, haven't seen La Chienne.

u gotta!

^this

my Top Five:
Grand Illusion
Crime Of Monsieur Lange
La Chienne
French Can Can
The Rules Of The Game

Caught La Chienne about a year ago and its great.

I do really like Renoir but I don't see why someone like Marcel Carne isn't held in as high a regard.

well, he made a lot fewer films, and what i've seen is fine, but not all on JR's consistent level.

I saw Woman on the Beach again last week and goddamn, among butchered films it's almost as spellbinding as Ambersons.

One thing that raises Renoir might be the Popular Front background but idk La Marsellaise fell a bit flat for me. He is the one director I am most in need of a proper retrospective.

Just saw The River again in a stunning Technicolor print at MoMA... Kael had this one right, a near masterpiece. Even though the two adolescent Brit girls are unbearable in the way only adolescent girls can be.

Its tone is its other triumph: the Western eye mimicking what it thinks is "Asian" stillness.

Its only significant flaw is the dialogue. Welles, in an unexpected rant collected in Jaglom's book from a couple years ago, laments how peculiarly bad Renoir could be when he and the material don't gel.

Still haven't seen. May watch on Hulu- so far haven't been to a single technicolor at MoMA, sorry.

the actor who plays the one-legged idol was awkward to me, not much of the dialogue. But that all melts away under the imagery, the depth, the color.

(btw the blooming young teen daughter is Adrienne Corri, who 20 years later met a bad fate under the ceramic penis in A Clockwork Orange)

Hey, two connections to Black Narcissus, Esmond Knight and Rumer Godden.

off to his late-period The Elusive Corporal shortly

^This is quite a feat, La Grande Illusione done almost as a slapstick comedy. His last true full-length feature; Durgnat wrote about it at length in hus Renoir book. The film was in a Lionsgate box that came out several years ago, may be OOP.

Oh I still have that box and haven't watched that one.

several latrine jokes too.

This Land Is Mine, anyone?

Found a used copy of the previously unknown to me Warner Archive edition on Thursday, screened last night. Charles Laughton as a timid schoolteacher alongside feisty Maureen O'Hara in Occupied France (film released in 1943). George Sanders in a fine turn as a collaborator with Walter Sleazak's Nazi officer. Laughton gets some understated yet rousing courtroom speeches near the end.

Interesting factoid from IMDB: The film opened simultaneously at 72 theaters in 50 key cities on 7 May 1943, setting a box office record for gross receipts on an opening day.

Very eerie, man, I watched it last night too... The least French version of France ever, even for Hollywood. Some nice touches here and there, and Laughton is lovely with a character whose "arc" is impossible not to predict, but I can't imagine it turned out to please Jean.

Also, would have preferred anyone to Una O'Connor as Chas's clinging mom, ans Sanders was pretty bad in an undernourished role i thought. Walter Slezak did formulaic Nazis with lots of gusto.

(this was Renoir's second film in the US, after Swamp Water, which i still haven't seen)

Swamp Water is pretty good but like all American Renoirs it feels to me like the work of a man halfheartedly struggling to fit in. Lang acclimated himself to Hollywood much better - or at least pulled off the illusion.

last night i was reading the titular essay of James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son" and he described having to run for his life after being refused service in a New Jersey restaurant... he had just come from seeing This Land Is Mine, which he thought ironical.

Swamp Water is pretty good but like all American Renoirs it feels to me like the work of a man halfheartedly struggling to fit in. Lang acclimated himself to Hollywood much better - or at least pulled off the illusion.

― Acid Hose (Capitaine Jay Vee),

Have you seen The Southerner? Beulah Bondi is a bit much, but the flood scenes are extraordinary. So are the ones with the sick kid.

Yes, I have. Great film - my favorite of his US ones along with "The Woman On The Beach".

The Southerner out on Blu from Kino Lorber today.

and now La Chienne on CC Blu

Peter Cowie on Renoir and my fave dead French actor (well along w/ Gabin) Michel Simon

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4104-flashback-jean-renoir-and-michel-simon

Gabin is rawr-rawr (especially young) but i imagine he smells like the inside of a 75-year-old box of Gitanes.

we don't have to smell him! (his ashes were scattered)

Watching the Criterion La Chienne tonight, which I haven't seen in any form.

it's great; i have it out of the library right now meself.

You are in for a treat. Great star and great director at their best. Remade at least once as what- Scarlet Street, maybe?

I think so. The plot's familiar.

See you both on the other side!

Looking forward to your review!

Scarlet Street it was.

With, um, Sylvia Sidney and Edward G. Robinson? ( The G. stands for what? Whose last role was what?)

No, not Sylvia Sidney.

Joan Bennett, same as The Woman in the Window

Must have been City Streets I was thinking of.

tone btwn the two is very different

Don't think I ever saw

Such a smart, acidic film. Also, Michel Simon and the actor who played the antagonist were both in love with the leading lady. She died in a car crash 4 days after shooting.

The 51-minute film that preceded La Chienne is included on the CC -- an adap of a Feydeau farce about parents flummoxed by their kid, who refuses to take a laxative! Renoir was possibly coerced into making it to prove to his producer that he could do a talkie on budget.

recent biography has arrived in English translation:

http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/a-supreme-artist-pascal-m%C3%A9rigeau-on-jean-renoir-a-biography

whoo

What were Jean Renoir’s politics? They depend on whom he was talking or writing to, I’m afraid. He was some kind of a chameleon. We must never forget that two Jean Renoirs, at least, did live in the same skin. My feeling about “The River” is that the film is less pro-colonial than the book. Rumer Godden’s first reaction after discovering the film was extremely bad. What she regretted the most was the impression that the emphasis on India, to some extent, “swamped the story” and produced a picture that was “overloaded with color,” so much so that what she had seen was “not a story set in India, but India hung on a not very strong story.”

I do not downgrade the film, but to me, “The River” is not a progressive picture. There is a share of indifference to the fate reserved for the Indians, expressed all the more freely because they are presented as accepting the principle of it "naturally." As André Bazin, who loved the film, wrote such a vision is “not false, but a bit superficial, spontaneously optimistic, and implicitly imperial.”

I bought the (800-page!) bio last week; on occasion the translation is not, er, felicitous. I'll see you on the other side.

don't remember seeing this one

Thrilled to be releasing Jean Renoir's LA MARSEILLAISE on @KinoLorber DVD and Blu-ray October 29th. Comes with archival Jean Renoir interview, @NickPinkerton audio commentary, and Dudley Andrew booklet essay. pic.twitter.com/XsxV1M1IMG

— R. Emmet Sweeney (@r_emmet) August 8, 2019

Filmstruck hosted it for a while. Great news.

it's also on Kanopy for those who still have access

really? Don't see it here.

when I go to Renoir in Filmmakers it gives me three films, Rules of the Game, The Southerner, and Le Marseillaise. I've always wondered if different institutions buy different subscriptions, though

that's it.

Saw Toni (1935) last weekend, a tragic romance made on location in the country rather in the style of producer Marcel Pagnol. It's very sexy and rather brutal.

I liked it too. He triumphs whenever his characters go outdoors.

Direct deposits, I'd imagine.

The Toni commenary by Philip Lopate and Kent Jones is a model of is kind. Lopate is excellent at pointing out how this or that composition exploits topography and local color.

Vacillating from comedy of manners to low comedy, La Marseillaise is an unsatisfying hybrid with a couple remarkable battle sequences and as ever his use of deep focus.

All I remember from that is people breaking into "La Marseillaise" the song over and over.

That this revive would be about The Grand Illusion showing up on MUBI US.

All I remember from that is people breaking into "La Marseillaise" the song over and over.

― Halfway there but for you

The 12-inch version blasts after the Tuileries massacre.

Vacillating from comedy of manners to low comedy, La Marseillaise is an unsatisfying hybrid with a couple remarkable battle sequences and as ever his use of deep focus. Would like to see this! Graceless pitching from epigrams and certain looks to fart jokes and eyepokes---and back and forth and back and forth--is a good idea. Ditto a couple remarkable battle sequences and as ever his use of deep focus.
Also, somebody start a thread for blurbs with unconventional appeal (or something like that).