Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir (1894–1979) was a French filmmaker, actor, producer, and writer. His works La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are frequently named by critics among the finest movies ever made. In 2002, the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound poll placed him fourth among the greatest directors.

Over his career, he earned many accolades, including a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975. He was the son of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the uncle of cinematographer Claude Renoir. Renoir was among the earliest directors recognized as an auteur; critic Penelope Gilliatt remarked that a single shot from him could be spotted “in a thousand miles of film.”

Early life

Born in Paris’s Montmartre district, Renoir was the second son of Aline Charigot Renoir and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. His older brother, Pierre, was a stage and film actor, while his younger brother, Claude, had a short film-industry career, mainly assisting on some of Jean’s projects. Jean was also the uncle of Claude Renoir (Pierre’s son), a cinematographer who worked with him on several films. He recalled discovering Alexandre Dumas around age ten and continuing to explore his work.

Renoir was mostly raised by his nanny and mother’s cousin, Gabrielle Renard, with whom he formed a deep bond. She arrived shortly before his birth and introduced him to Montmartre’s Guignol puppet shows, which shaped his later filmmaking. In his 1974 memoir, he wrote that she taught him to see past masks and clichés. Gabrielle was also drawn to early cinema and took him to his first film when he was very young.

As a child, Renoir moved with his family to southern France. He and his relatives frequently appeared in his father’s paintings. His father’s financial success allowed him to attend fashionable boarding schools, though he often ran away. When World War I broke out, Renoir served in the French cavalry.

After being shot in the leg, he became a reconnaissance pilot. The injury left him with a permanent limp but sparked his interest in cinema, as he spent his recovery watching films by Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and others. After the war, on his father’s advice, he tried making ceramic art but soon turned to filmmaking, partly to make his wife, Catherine Hessling, a star. He was especially inspired by Erich von Stroheim’s work.

Early years

In 1924, Renoir directed Une Vie Sans Joie (also called Catherine), the first of nine silent films, most starring Hessling, who had been his father’s last model. These early films didn’t turn a profit, so Renoir gradually sold paintings he’d inherited to fund them. Hessling also starred in Nana (1926) and the silent futuristic fantasy Charleston Parade (1927), which featured African American mime artist Johnny Hudgins.

International success in the 1930s

The 1930s brought Renoir great success. In 1931, he made his first sound films: On purge bébé and La Chienne. The next year, he directed Boudu Saved from Drowning, a farce mocking a middle-class bookseller’s pretensions after he tries to reform a vagrant played by Michel Simon.

In 1934, he adapted Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. His 1935 film Toni, shot on location with nonprofessional actors, later influenced the French New Wave. By mid-decade, Renoir was linked to the Popular Front, and films like The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1935), Life Belongs to Us (1936), and La Marseillaise (1938) reflected its politics.

In 1937, he made La Grande Illusion, starring Erich von Stroheim and Jean Gabin. This film about brotherhood, following French POWs’ escape attempts during World War I, was a huge success. It won Best Artistic Ensemble at the Venice Film Festival, was banned in Germany and later Italy, and became the first foreign-language film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In 1938, Nazis disrupted a screening; Renoir said the story filled him with pride. He followed with The Human Beast (1938), a film noir based on Émile Zola’s novel, starring Gabin and Simone Simon, which also succeeded. In 1939, able to co-finance his own projects, he made The Rules of the Game.

In that film, Renoir played Octave, who delivers a famous line: “You see, in this world, there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons.” Critic Pauline Kael wrote that at his best, Renoir expressed “the beauty in our common humanity—the desires and hopes, the absurdities and follies, that we all share.” The New York Times noted that his style—a blend of tenderness, irony, and Gallic insouciance—was captured in that line. With his nephew Claude, Renoir made The River (1951), the first color film shot in India. A lifelong theater lover, he turned to the stage for The Golden Coach (1952) and French Cancan (1955).