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Director

Jean Renoir

France · b. September 15, 1894 – d. February 12, 1979
Profile

Jean Renoir (1894-1975) was a French filmmaker who developed a naturalistic approach to cinema that emphasized ensemble casts, fluid camera movement, and deep focus cinematography. His major works, including *La Grande Illusion* (1937) and *La Règle du jeu* (1939), explored class conflict and human complexity through carefully observed social interaction. Renoir's humanist perspective and technical innovations influenced filmmakers across Europe and America, establishing conventions of narrative cinema that persisted for decades. He worked in both France and Hollywood, adapting his methods to different contexts while maintaining a distinctive visual and thematic approach to storytelling.

Thematic context drawn from Senses of Cinema. Read the full critical essay →
In Their Own Words

I realized that a person in a coma can have an intense life. And that memory also was influential for the movie.

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Filmography (114)
David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film , U.S.A. and U.K., Alfred A. Knopf and Little Brown 2002
James Leahy, “All in the Script? So Why Make the Movie?”, Vertigo , Vol.2, No.2 2002
John Gibbs, Mise-en-scène: Film Style and Interpretation , London and New York, Wallflower Press 2002
Rémi Fournier Lanzoni, French Cinema: from its Beginnings to the Present , New York & London, Continuum 2002
A gala production, staged for a single night in the Roman Arena in Arles to celebrate the th . anniversary of the foundation of the city by Julius Caesar. 2000
Peter Wollen, “ La Règle du jeu and Modernity”, Film Studies , no.1 1999
James Leahy, “Jean Renoir”, London, Encarta CD-ROM, Websters Microsoft International, and subsequent editions 1998
James Leahy, “Historical Development of Cinema in France”, London, Encarta CD-ROM, Websters Microsoft International, and subsequent editions 1997
L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between , London, Penguin Books, (first published 1997
James Leahy, notes on Renoir, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange and French Cancan , published with the release of those films on video, London, Connoisseur Video, Spring 1996
James Leahy, “Is it on Video? The Angel and the Vampire”, Vertigo , no. 5, Winter -5 (on Le Crime de Monsieur Lange 1994
Un Tournage à la campagne 1994
Letters , edited by Lorraine Lo Bianco and David Thompson, translated by Craig Carison, Natasha Arnold, Michael Wells, Anneliese Varaldviev, London and Boston, Faber and Faber 1994
James Leahy, “Image, Meaning, History… & the Voice of God”, Vertigo , no. 4, Spring, (on La Vie est à nous , narration and March of Time 1994
Jean Renoir 1993
Susan Hayward, French National Cinema , London & New York, Routledge, (important, revealing and well-researched account of the economic infrastructure of French filmmaking 1993
Barry Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis , London, Starword, 2nd edition 1992
Richard Boston, Boudu Saved from Drowning 1992
Ronald Bergan, Jean Renoir, Projections of Paradise: a Biography , London, Bloomsbury 1992
Susan Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau (eds.), French Film: Texts and Contexts , London, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1990
Pierre Guislain, La Règle du jeu: Jean Renoir , Paris, Hatier 1990
André Bazin (ed. by François Truffaut, from the notes left by Bazin on his death), Jean Renoir , Paris, Lebovici 1989
Eugène Lourié, My Work in Films , San Diego, New York and London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, (the memoirs of the production designer whose collaboration with Renoir lasted from Les Bas fonds through the Hollywood years to The River 1985
Norman King, Abel Gance: a Politics of Spectacle , London, BFI 1984
Mary Lea Bandy (ed.), Rediscovering French Film , New York, Museum of Modem Art, (an anthology of important articles by film historians, critics and filmmakers; has a substantial bibliography 1983
Donald Posner, “The Swinging Women of Watteau and Fragonard”, Art Bulletin LXIV, March 1982
Herbert R. Lottman, The Left Bank: Writers, Artists and Politics from the Popular Front to the Cold War , London, Heinemann, . 1982
Geneviève , Paris, Flammarion, , novel 1979
Le Crime de l’anglais , Paris, Flammarion, , novel 1979
Julienne et son amour and En avant, Rosalie ! , Henri Veyrier, , unproduced scripts 1979
La Coeur à l’aise , Paris, Flammarion, , novel 1978
Carola (a play in three acts, complete text), L’Avant-scène du théâtre 1976
Penelope Gilliatt (ed.), Jean Renoir: Essays, Conversations, Reviews , New York, McGraw-Hill 1975
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen , Vol.16, No.3, Autumn 1975
My Life and My Films , London, Collins (a translation [by Norman Denny] of the director’s memoirs: Ma Vie et mes films , Paris, Flammarion, ; this contains an account of the setting up of La Grande illusion 1974
Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind , St. Albans, Paladin, (essays on order and organisation in living systems, including discussions of non-verbal communication, and how these have been elaborated into complex forms of art 1973
A new adaptation by James Bridges for Hollywood Television Theater was booadcast on 3 February, , on WNET, New York, directed by Norman Lloyd. The cast included Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Albert Paulsen, Michael Sacks, Anthony Zerbe, Carmen Zapete and Douglas Anderson. The Production Designer was Eugène Lourié 1973
John Laver and Sandy Hutcheson (eds.), Communication in Face to Face Interaction , Harmondswoth, Mx., Penguin Books 1972
Alan Lomax, “Choreometrics and Ethnographic Filmmaking”, Filmmaker’s Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 4, February . (Lomax’s seminal account of the scientific study of dance patterns was brought to my attention by Nick Ray, his friend since the s. We were sitting in Lomax’s apartment, which Nick used to borrow when the owner was away for the weekend. Drawing on the ideas of some of the writers above, I was explaining that I believed that much of the power and poetry of Nick’s films depended on their articulations of space and movement. The same is true of those of Renoir. Lomax’s insights are relevant not only to documentary and ethnographic filmmakers, but to any analysis of how films communicate their meanings and generate their impact). 1971
The Christian Licorice Store 1971
Ray L. Birtwhistell, Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body-Motion Communication , U.S.A., University of Pennsylvania Press (pioneering scientific investigation of the systems now popularly known as “body language” 1970
Edward Hall, The Hidden Dimension , New York, Doubleday Anchor 1969
Le Petit théâtre de Jean Renoir 1969
La Direction d’acteur par Jean Renoir 1968
This is the film which inspired the polemical lecture about film history which Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Léaud) delivers to fellow members of the collective in Godard’s La Chinoise 1967
Louis Lumière 1967
David Thomson, Movie Man , New York, Stein and Day 1967
Michael Argyle, The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour , Harmondswoth, Mx., Penguin Books 1967
Jean Renoir: le patron 1967
The Notebooks of Captain Georges , London and Boston, Collins and Little Brown, (translation [by Norman Denny] of Renoir’s novel Les Cahiers du capitaine Georges, Paris, Gallimard 1966
Edward Hall, The Silent Language , New York, Fawcett World Library 1966
Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education , Baltimore, Maryland and Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin Books, (a translation by Robert Baldick of L’Education sentimentale , Paris ,1869 1964
Le Caporal épinglé 1962
Renoir: My Father , London and Boston, Collins and Little Brown, (translation [by Randolph and Dorothy Weaver] of Pierre-August Renoir, mon père , Paris, Hachette 1962
Bernard Chardère, Jean Renoir , Lyon, Premier Plan nos. 22, 23, 24, May 1962
Carola , U.S.A. 1960
V. I. Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting , New York, Grove Press 1960
Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier 1959
Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe 1959
Editor: Marguerite Renoir, assistant Marthe Huguet; , restoration for re-release, Renée Lichtig 1958
Le Grand couteau 1957
Eléna et les hommes 1956
L’Album de famille de Jean Renoir 1956
Orvet , Paris, Gallimard 1955
Orvet , France 1955
Translation and adaptation by Jean Renoir of the play by his friend Clifford Odets, which had been filmed in by Renoir’s former assistant Robert Aldrich. 1955
French Cancan 1955
Jules César 1954
The Golden Coach 1953
John Northam, Ibsen’s Dramatic Method: a Study of the Prose Plays , London, Faber and Faber (a study of the dramatist’s use, as revealed by his stage directions, of the elements of staging [costume, sets, props, lighting, movement, physical appearance] to generate poetic and dramatic impact, and to articulate his themes 1953
The River 1951
The Woman on the Beach 1947
The Diary of a Chambermaid 1946
The Southerner 1945
Salute to France 1944
This Land is Mine 1943
Swamp Water 1941
La Tosca 1940
La Règle du jeu 1939
La Marseillaise 1938
La Bête humaine 1938
The Spanish Earth 1937
La Grande illusion 1937
Gerry Turvey, “, the culture of the Popular Front and Jean Renoir”, London, Academic Press, Media, Culture and Society , Vol.4, No.4, October 1936
Le Crime de Monsieur Lange 1936
Les Bas-fonds 1936
Une Partie de campagne 1936
La Vie est à nous 1936
Ginette Vincendeau and Keith Reader (eds.), La Vie est à nous: French Cinema of the Popular Front - , London, National Film Theatre, BFI, (a collection of essays, some in translation, to introduce a major season of films at the National Film Theatre on the 50th anniversary of the election of the Popular Front government in France 1935
Goffredo Fofi, “The Cinema of the Popular Front in France (-38)”, London, Society for Education in Film and Television, Screen , Vol.13, No.4, Winter -3 1934
Toni 1934
Madame Bovary 1933
Chotard et Cie 1933
Night at the Crossroads ) 1932
Boudu sauvé des eaux 1932
On purge bébé 1931
La Chienne 1931
Die Jagd nach dem Gluck 1930
Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Paul Vaillant-Couturier, Jean-Paul Dreyfus, Pierre Unik; (the content of one scene suggests that Ilya Ehrenburg, the Izvetsia correspondent in Paris throughout the s, may have had an input 1930
Music: Darius Milhaud 1930
Le Bled 1929
Le Petit chaperon rouge 1929
Le Tournoi 1928
Tire au flanc 1928
La Petite marchande d’allumettes 1928
Marquitta 1927
La P’tite Lili 1927
Charleston 1927
Distribution: Pierre Braunberger (, re-edited and released under the title Une Vie sans joie 1927
Nana 1926
Ecrits - , Paris, Pierre Belfond, (Renoir’s journalism and other writings collected by Claud Gauteur 1926
Catherine 1924
La Fille de l’eau 1924
Songs: “Complainte de la Butte,” lyrics by Jean Renoir; airs from Caf’Conc’ of , sung by Cora Vaucaire, Mario Juillard 1900