Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
RANKED:
11. The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936)
"The Crime of Monsieur Lange" is Jean Renoir's dream scenario for a new political France. It tells the story of a cooperative business flourishing due to the death of its capitalist authoritarian figurehead. The boss of a publishing company exerts ultimate control and restricts his employees' creative and economic prosperity. After his murder, they flourish. A bit sadistic, but in 1936, the infestation of facism and authoritarianism that was sweeping Europe created some of the best anti-establishment works of cinematic art.
10. A Day in the Country (1946)
Despite being filmed in 1936, Jean Renoir's "A Day in the Country" was edited and released until 1946 by his ex-wife. Based on the 1881 novel by Guy de Maupassant, the film spends the day with a Parisian family on the French countryside. While watching the film, you feel as though you are watching a memory. A day spent in the country, the feeling of freedom, the discomfort of losing your virginity, the flirtations of a temporary suitor: all of these happenings fly by us on screen and then become a faded memory. Renoir soaks in all these images with his naturalistic and poetic gaze. Renoir cements you in the present moment and allows for the natural beauty of nature and the countryside to swell over you. When it's gone, you feel its loss. But, the memory remains.
9. French Cancan (1955)
In one of his last cinematic efforts, Jean Renoir paid homage to impressionist paintings, France, and his career as an artist and entertainer. "French Cancan" has some of the best use of colorized photography mixed with immaculately picturesque mise-en-scene. It tells the story of the construction and grand opening of the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Through the cast of artists and dancers, the film expresses what being an artist is all about, its struggles and triumphs.
8. La Bete Humaine (1938)
Jean Renoir's 1938 film "La Bete Humaine" tells the story of a working-class train engineer in a contemporary France. While he is on the job, he is fine. When he is not, his anger shows iteself. Renoir's depiction of the surpressed agression of the working class paints a dark and disturbing picture of French daily life. A raging anti-capitalist, Renoir's depiction of the grueling and tireless work of laborers creates the 'human beast' from the film's title. Their beastly behavior and violent outbursts are created by a tired and restless soul, alcoholism, and an inability to enjoy the splendors of life.
7. The Southerner (1945)
After depicting French society in the 1930s, Jean Renoir fled a war torn Europe to make films in America. With "The Southerner," he depicts a working-class America. The film is about a ranch-hand who tries to fulfill the American dream to become his own farmer. His dream, however, is repeatedly confronted with the harsh realities of rural life. Despite all this, he persists. Renoir depicts an America that is unforgiving, competitive, and selfish - but makes a point to demonstrate how, on the flipside, America is also optimistic, sacrificing, and ambitious. With "The Southerner," Renoir shows the true scope of America, its coldness and its warmth.
6. Toni (1935)
Nazism had an insidious influence on Europe in the 1930s, infecting xenophobia into every corner of the continent. Renoir's "Toni" depicts Italian Immigrants who come to France to find work. With Renoir's depiction of the uphill battles faced by these working-class immigrants, alienation between the two cultures seems inevitable. "Toni" is Renoir's harsh critisism over his country's ill treatment of its nation's foreign residents.
5. Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)
A masterwork in visual storytelling, "Boudu Saved from Drowning" tells the story of a bourgeois family taking in a homeless man after saving him from drowning. What follows is visual philosophy. Renoir paints Boudu as an animal caught in a trap, his visual dirtyness along with his chaotic physical movements clash drastically with the ordered, prestine, and affluent home of this high class family. Boudu bounces around the interior spaces like a pinball, crashing and bumping into things. This visual spectacle represents the psychological devide between our animalistic natural sevles and our modern societal self. This devide allows the viewer to explore the falsity of modern societal living, and the thin layer separating us between our false sense of control and the natural disorder of the self.
4. The River (1951)
Jean Renoir's "The River" follows an English family living in India. As the story progresses, it becomes more and more apparent that the white upper-class family appear very lost and confused in their life, dealing with trivial matters of no exestential consequence. Renoir surrounds this meandering with an environment of an Indian culture focused on their spirituality and purpose in life. Renoir allows the viewer to spot the differences in how the differing cultures view life. One culture is preoccupied with more material matters while the other is tightly held by tradition and worship. Utilizing gorgeous colors, Renoir paints the Indian culture as vibrant and full of life, as they are the only ones actually thinking about life, freeing them from the constraints of the frivilous burdens the Western characters trap themselves in.
3. La Chienne (1931)
"La Chienne," or "The Bitch" in the English translation, tells the story of a grocery store clerk who is an artist in his spare time. He meets and falls for a woman named Lulu. He showers her with praise, gifts, and even his art. Little does he know that Lulu and her gangster boyfriend are using his art to make money. Through Jean Renoir's exquisitie rendering, we are presented a world in which no real human relationships exist - every character acts as a parasidic leach to another character. This is a world in which everyone must prostitute themselves just to get by. Renoir wants to make it very clear that this world he is painting is the world you live in. With his strokes of poetic realism, Renoir visually infuses the characters' interactions in direct adjacency to the physical world - a physical world you also happen to inhabit. Renoir reaches through the screen to inform you that YOU are 'the bitch' from the film's title, as YOU are merely a prostitute in a capitalist society.
2. La Grand Illusion (1936)
With war on the horizon, Jean Renoir chose to make an anti-war film, "La Grand Illusion." With it, he depicts French soldiers captured by German forces during World War I. But what is the 'grand illusion' the title of the film is referencing? The grand illusion is that of nationality, race, and class. With the film, Renoir presents a fallacy in human perception. Rather than have the characters behave animalistic towards each other, Renoir has them behave in civilized manners, which completely undermines the very nature of conflict and war itself. Through this, the illusion presents itself. Every character becomes a human being, while the uniform they're wearing not only becomes meaningless, but each uniform blends in with another. Renoir demonstrates the illusion your perceptions lie on. Who we choose to identify as now becomes an absurdity, as these distinctions create the very need for conflict. The 'otherness' you choose to see in others is the illusion, and is the very cause of war itself. With Nazi propaganda instilling racism, xenophobia, and nationalism across Europe, Renoir's "La Grande Illusion" was a revolutionary attack on these harmful ideals.
1. The Rules of the Game (1939)
With the entirety of France anxiously awaiting an impending war, Jean Renoir's "The Rules of the Game" depicts a society dancing on a volcano. Pointing a finger at the French borgeoise class, Renoir depicts a society of comfort and frivolity. The reckless abandon with which this wealthy class behaves creates a collapsing babylon - not only a collapse of society iself, but a collapse in humanity. The wealthly elite become so comfortable and bored that they fill their time with gaiety. More importantly, they begin to completely detach themselves from human empathy. As they become more and more reckless, it becomes clear that they will do anything to satiate their apathy. This apathy becomes dangerous - as Renoir demonstrates with the culling of the rabbits. Mirroring what was to come for Europe, these wealthly elites begin to dehumanize everything around them and take everything for their own pleasure - even if it means mass killings of 'pests' on their property. Not only is this film a social critique, but a commentary on the nature of our own delusions. The famous line from the film, "Everyone has their reasons" becomes all the more clear once the 'rules of the game' begin to break down altogether. Renoir is telling us that the secret is that there are no rules, and that humanity will always do what is in its own selfish interest.
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