A Companion to Jean Renoir

by Phillips, Alastair; Vincendeau, Ginette

• ISBN13: 9781118325315
• ISBN10: 1118325311
• Edition: 1st
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2013-05-28
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

François Truffaut called him, simply, ‘the best’. Jean Renoir is a towering figure in world cinema and fully justifies this monumental survey that includes contributions from leading international film scholars and comprehensively analyzes Renoir’s life and career from numerous critical perspectives.

• New and original research by the world’s leading English and French language Renoir scholars explores stylistic, cultural and ideological aspects of Renoir’s films as well as key biographical periods
• Thematic structure admits a range of critical methodologies, from textual analysis to archival research, cultural studies, gender-based and philosophical approaches
• Features detailed analysis of Renoir’s essential works
• Provides an international perspective on this key auteur’s enduring significance in world film history

Author Biography

Alastair Phillips is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of Rififi (2009), and City of Darkness, City of Light: Émigré Filmmakers in Paris 1929-1939 (2004). He is co-author of 100 Film Noirs (2009) and co-editor, with Ginette Vincendeau, of Journeys of Desire: European Actors in Hollywood (2006) as well as, with Julian Stringer, of Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts (2007).

Ginette Vincendeau is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London, UK. Among her books are Jean Gabin, Anatomie d’un mythe, with Claude Gauteur (1993, 2006), Pépé le Moko (1998), Stars and Stardom in French Cinema (2000), Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris (2003), and La Haine (2005). She co-edited Journeys of Desire: European Actors in Hollywood (2006) and The New Wave: Critical Landmarks (2009).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Introduction: Renoir in and out of his Time
Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau 

PART I – RENOIR IN CLOSE-UP

1.1. REASSESSING RENOIR’S AESTHETICS

1. Shooting in Deep Time: The Mise-en-scène of History in Renoir’s Films of the 1930s
Martin O’Shaughnessy

2. The Exception and the Norm: Relocating Renoir’s Sound and Music
Charles O’Brien

3. The Invention of French Talking Cinema: Language in Renoir’s Early Sound Films
Michel Marie

4. Renoir and His Actors: The Freedom of Puppets
Christophe Damour

5. Design at Work: Renoir’s Costume Dramas of the 1950s
Susan Hayward

1.2. CRITICAL FOCUS ON SELECTED FILMS
   
6. Sur un air de Charleston, Nana, La Petite marchande d’allumettes, Tire au flanc: Renoir and the Ethics of Play
Anne M. Kern

7. La Grande illusion: Sound, Silence and the Displacement of Emotion
Valerie Orpen

8. La Bête humaine: Double Murder at the Station at Le Havre
Olivier Curchod

9. La Règle du jeu: Lies, Truth and Irresolution (A Critical Roundtable)
V.F. Perkins, Chris Faulkner and Martin O’Shaughnessy

10. The River: Beneath the Surface with André Bazin
Prakash Younger

PART II – RENOIR: THE WIDER VIEW

2.1. RENOIR’S FILMMAKING AND THE ARTS

11. Seeing With His Own Eyes: Renoir and Photography
Alastair Phillips

12. Popular Songs in Renoir’s Films of the 1930s
Kelley Conway

13. Renoir and the Popular Theatre of his Time
Geneviève Sellier

14. Theatricality and Spectacle in La Règle du jeu, Le Carrosse d’or and Elena et les hommes 
Thomas Elsaesser

15. French Cancan: A Song and Dance About Women
Ginette Vincendeau

16. Social Roles/Political Responsibilities: the Evolving Figure of the Artist in Jean Renoir’s Films, 1928-1939
Charles Musser

2.2. RENOIR’S PLACE IN THE CRITICAL CANON

17. Seeing through Renoir, Seen through Bazin
Dudley Andrew

18. Henri Agel’s Cinema of Contemplation: Renoir and Philosophy
Sarah Cooper

19. Jean Renoir and the French Communist Party: the Grand Disillusion
Laurent Marie

20. ‘Better Than a Masterpiece’: Revisiting the Reception of La Règle du jeu
Claude Gauteur

21. Renoir and the French New Wave
Richard Neupert

22. Renoir Between the Public, the Professors and the Polls 
Ian Christie
 
PART III – RENOIR, A NATIONAL AND A TRANS-NATIONAL FIGURE

3.1. RENOIR, THE CHRONICLER OF FRENCH SOCIETY

23. Renoir under the Popular Front: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Paradoxes of Engagement
Brett Bowles

24. The Performance of History in La Marseillaise
Tom Brown

25. Toni, A Regional Melodrama of Failed Masculinity
Keith Reader

26. La Règle du jeu: a Document of French Everyday Life
Christopher Faulkner

27. Renoir’s Jews in Context
Maureen Turim

3.2. RENOIR, THE INTERNATIONAL FIGURE

28. Jean Renoir’s War
Julian Jackson

29. Interconnected Sites of Struggle: Re-Situating Renoir’s Career in Hollywood
Elizabeth Vitanza

30. The Southerner: Touching Relationships
Edward Gallafent

31. The Woman on the Beach: Renoir’s Dark Lady
Jean-Loup Bourget

32. Remaking Renoir in Hollywood
Lucy Mazdon

PART IV – APPENDICES

Filmography

Bibliography

Index