The Golden Coach (1952)

 Jean Renoir's "The Golden Coach"

While the 1940s were not as creatively successful for iconic French filmmaker Jean Renoir, the 1950s provided him a second wind. In fact, the addition of technicolor seemed to bring him even closer to the visual prowess of his father, Auguste. The immensity and breadth of his visual creativity would reach its zenith in his 1951 work, "The River." A year later, his production in Italy of the film "The Golden Coach" would continue this streak of impressive technicolor films that would come to mark his late period.

The film stars Anna Magnani, an Italian actress, who arrives with her theater troop to a remote Peruvian town in the 18th century. Her immense beauty causes her to be courted by three men of varying social and economic status: a viceroy, a bullfighter, and a solider. 

As previously stated, the late period of Renoir seems to ensure a sense of visual vitality. To aid in this, his thematic point of interest seems to be the relationship between art and life. The motif he seems to like using is that of a window or a mirror, as the portal between art and life start to blend and blur together. What struck me most about "The Golden Coach" is something I quite admire about Renoir's recurring themes. That is, the notion that life is one big illusion. At least, the silly little games we play in that sense. Just like in the performances on stage, we play parts and roles in real life as well, all equally conjured by the sheer sense of performance rather than any concrete objectivity. What I'm sayin is: the economics, the conflicts, and social parameters of life are all an illusion of farcical comedy. All the world's a stage and we are merely players. At the hands of Renoir, social constructions become transparent, allowing us (the viewer) to see our own world with the make-believe social constructs we've created for ourselves. 

Overall, I liked "The Golden Coach." I don't equate it at all with his other works of this late period, like his masterpiece "The River" or the 1955 film "French Cancan," that better exemplifies the themes that he is attempting with this film. However, "The Golden Coach," although it was critically and commercially panned in its time, remains an integral piece in the work of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.