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46-461: Jean Renoir called him, a "great technician, [a] rigorist, a poet". It was as an actor, in 1916 at the Théâtre de l'Odéon under the direction of André Antoine , that Duvivier's career began. In 1918 he moved on to Gaumont , as a writer and assistant of, amongst others, André Antoine, Louis Feuillade and Marcel L'Herbier . In 1919 he directed his first film. In the 1920s several of his films had

92-415: A Reginald Le Borg directed film which was built around a cut thirty-minute sequence from Flesh and Fantasy (Duvivier was uncredited) . On his return to France, Duvivier experienced some difficulties in resuming his career. Panic (Panique) (1946), an exhaustive summary of the lowest of human instincts, was the most personal, darkest, and nihilistic of his works. It was a bitter failure with critics and

138-412: A satire on contemporary French society with an ensemble cast. Renoir played the character Octave, who serves to connect characters from different social strata. The film was his greatest commercial failure, met with derision by Parisian audiences at its premiere. He extensively reedited the work, but without success at the time. A few weeks after the outbreak of World War II , the film was banned by

184-638: A Chambermaid and Picnic on the Grass . Renoir's last film is Le Petit théâtre de Jean Renoir ( The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir ), released in 1970. It is a series of three short films made in a variety of styles. It is, in many ways, one of his most challenging, avant-garde and unconventional works. Unable to obtain financing for his films and suffering declining health, Renoir spent his last years receiving friends at his home in Beverly Hills, and writing novels and his memoirs. In 1973 Renoir

230-490: A Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975 for his contribution to the motion picture industry. Renoir was the son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the uncle of the cinematographer Claude Renoir . He was one of the first filmmakers to be known as an auteur . Renoir was born in the Montmartre district of Paris , France . He was the second son of Aline (née Charigot) Renoir and Pierre-Auguste Renoir ,

276-614: A constant concern for the framing of the composition to reinforce an inquisitorial, menacing atmosphere. The same year he was invited to be part of the jury of the Cannes Film Festival , 1959, the year the Nouvelle Vague fully emerged. Duvivier's final portmanteau film was Le Diable et les dix Commandements (1962), while the scenario of Chair de poule (1963) has a resemblance to The Postman Always Rings Twice and again features an unscrupulous woman. During

322-582: A family in Montmartre from the Franco-Prussian War to World War II . An American release featured an introduction by Charles Boyer and scenes of the German entry into Paris. Louis Jourdan played the on screen brother of his real life brother, Pierre . Filming started in late 1939 but was interrupted by the war. The film was released in New York before France. On January 25, 2005,

368-516: A farcical sendup of the pretensions of a middle-class bookseller and his family, who meet with comic, and ultimately disastrous, results when they attempt to reform a vagrant played by Michel Simon . By the middle of the decade, Renoir was associated with the Popular Front . Several of his films, such as The Crime of Monsieur Lange ( Le Crime de Monsieur Lange , 1935), Life Belongs to Us (1936) and La Marseillaise (1938), reflect

414-531: A horror film adapted from a novel by Selma Lagerlöf . In 1940 Untel père et fils , a family history starring Raimu , Michèle Morgan , and Louis Jouvet , was not able to be shown — because of the political situation — until the end of the war, at least in France. It is generally considered a minor work, and even a failure. During World War II , Duvivier left to work in the United States. Before leaving

460-516: A near-complete print of the film. Since that time, The Rules of the Game has been reappraised and has frequently appeared near the top of critics' polls of the best films ever made . A week after the disastrous premiere of The Rules of the Game in July 1939, Renoir went to Rome with Karl Koch and Dido Freire, subsequently his second wife, to work on the script for a film version of Tosca . At

506-479: A religious concern: Credo ou la tragédie de Lourdes    [ fr ] , L'abbé Constantin and La Vie miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin — a film about the Carmelite saint Thérèse of Lisieux . In the 1930s Duvivier was part of the production company, 'Film d'Art', founded by Marcel Vandal and Charles Delac and he worked as part of a team. He stayed with them for nine years. David Golder (1930),

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552-415: A remake of an earlier German horror film , Duvivier set out on La belle équipe (also 1936), with Jean Gabin, Charles Vanel and Raymond Aimos. The film remains a significant example of his work. Five unemployed men hit the lottery jackpot and decide to buy a seaside café/dance hall together. The unexpected, however, keeps happening. Once jealousy over a woman, Gina, ( Viviane Romance ), gets mixed up with

598-980: A scholar of medieval English literature . Jean Renoir died in Beverly Hills, California , on 12 February 1979 of a heart attack . His body was returned to France and buried beside his family in the cemetery at Essoyes , France. On his death, fellow director and friend Orson Welles wrote "Jean Renoir: The Greatest of All Directors" in the Los Angeles Times . Renoir's films have influenced many other directors, including Éric Rohmer , Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet , Peter Bogdanovich , François Truffaut , Robert Altman , Errol Morris Martin Scorsese and Mike Leigh . Four of his crew members, Satyajit Ray , Luchino Visconti , Robert Aldrich , and Jacques Becker , would go on to become highly acclaimed directors in their own right. He

644-534: Is a film about Texas sharecroppers that is often regarded as his best American film. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Directing for this work. Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) is an adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel, Le Journal d'une femme de chambre , starring Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith . His The Woman on the Beach (1947), starring Joan Bennett and Robert Ryan ,

690-779: Is both a meditation on human beings' relationship with nature and a coming of age story of three young girls in colonial India . The film won the International Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951. After returning to work in Europe, Renoir made a trilogy of color musical comedies on the subjects of theater, politics and commerce: Le Carrosse d'or ( The Golden Coach , 1953) with Anna Magnani ; French Cancan (1954) with Jean Gabin and María Félix ; and Eléna et les hommes ( Elena and Her Men , 1956) with Ingrid Bergman and Jean Marais . During

736-547: Is the greatest of directors, he justifies cinema... In Renoir, My Father and in his own autobiography, My Life and My Films, Jean clearly adopts his father's wish to float on life like a cork. That same stream carries Boudu away to freedom, wrinkles with pain at the end of Partie de Campagne , overflows and engenders precarious existence in The Southerner , and is meaning itself in The River: The river runs,

782-505: The Impressionist painter. His elder brother was Pierre Renoir , a French stage and film actor, and his younger brother Claude Renoir (1901–1969) had a brief career in the film industry, mostly assisting on a few of Jean's films. Jean Renoir was also the uncle of Claude Renoir (1913–1993), the son of Pierre, a cinematographer who worked with Jean Renoir on several of his films. He recalls that "I discovered Alexandre Dumas when I

828-528: The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. According to David Thomson , Renoir was "the model of humanist cinema, an informal genre that included Frank Capra , Vittorio de Sica , Satyajit Ray , Yasujirō Ozu or even Charlie Chaplin ." In The New Biographical Dictionary of Film , he writes: "Renoir asks us to see the variety and muddle of life without settling for one interpretation. He

874-622: The United States with Dido Freire. "Dido and I travelled by sea from Marseilles to Algeria , Morocco and Lisbon ... At Lisbon we got places on an American ship, and I was delighted to find myself sharing a cabin with none other than the writer Saint-Exupéry ." In Hollywood , Renoir had difficulty finding projects that suited him. His first American film, Swamp Water (1941), was a drama starring Dana Andrews and Walter Brennan . He co-produced and directed an anti- Nazi film set in France, This Land Is Mine (1943), starring Maureen O'Hara and Charles Laughton . The Southerner (1945)

920-814: The age of 45, he became a lieutenant in the French Army Film Service. He was sent back to Italy, to teach film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, and resume work on Tosca . The French government hoped this cultural exchange would help maintain friendly relations with Italy, which had not yet entered the war. He abandoned the project to return to France and make himself available for military service in August 1939. After Germany invaded France in May 1940, Renoir fled to

966-671: The continent, he spent some days in Portugal. He stayed in Estoril , at the Hotel Palácio, between 2 July and 6 July 1940. After arriving in the United States, he produced several movies. Lydia (1941); two anthology films, Tales of Manhattan (1942) with Charles Boyer and Rita Hayworth among leading actors, and Flesh and Fantasy (1943) with Edward G. Robinson , Charles Boyer and Barbara Stanwyck ; The Impostor (1944), again with Jean Gabin; and Destiny (also 1944),

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1012-475: The drama Lovers of Paris (starring Gérard Philipe ) and the comedy-thriller The Man in the Raincoat (starring Fernandel and Bernard Blier ). Marie-Octobre (1959) followed, featuring Danielle Darrieux , Serge Reggiani , and Bernard Blier amongst others. It was an exercise in style; 11 people, nine men, two women, and a mise en scène that followed the unities of time, place, and action, it had

1058-496: The face behind the mask and the fraud behind the flourishes. She taught me to detest the cliché." Gabrielle was also fascinated by the new early motion pictures , and when Renoir was only a few years old she took him to see his first film. As a child, Renoir moved to the south of France with his family. He and the rest of the Renoir family were the subjects of many of his father's paintings. His father's financial success ensured that

1104-546: The fall of 1967, just as the production of Diaboliquement vôtre reached completion, a film about a man made amnesiac following a car accident, Duvivier was in a traffic accident, triggering a heart attack which killed him. He was 71; he left behind a filmography comprising nearly 70 films. He is buried in the cemetery of Rueil-Malmaison in the Hauts-de-Seine . Jean Renoir Jean Renoir ( French: [ʁənwaʁ] ; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979)

1150-670: The first of the humorous Don Camillo films from the Giovannino Guareschi books, Le Petit monde de Don Camillo . It met with immediate popular success and he followed its success with The Return of Don Camillo (1953). The series continued with other directors. In Deadlier Than the Male (1956), Jean Gabin plays a decent restaurateur in Les Halles who is swindled by a cynical young woman, Catherine, ( Danièle Delorme ). Duvivier co-wrote and directed two films in 1957:

1196-549: The government. Renoir was a known pacifist and supporter of the French Communist Party , which made him suspect in the tense weeks before the war began. The ban was lifted briefly in 1940, but after the fall of France that June, it was banned again. Subsequently, the original negative of the film was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid. It was not until the 1950s that French film enthusiasts Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand, with Renoir's cooperation, reconstructed

1242-722: The midst of the gangster underworld and which had the Casbah (Arab quarter) of Algiers for exotic backdrop, was the film which propelled Jean Gabin into the category of an international star. In 1938 Duvivier signed a contract with MGM and made his first American film, a biopic of Johann Strauss , The Great Waltz . The next year, back in France, he made La Fin du jour , in which theatre actors in retirement struggle to see that their retirement home remains open. Michel Simon played an old ham actor, and Louis Jouvet , an old leading actor who still believes in his seductive powers. La Charrette fantôme    [ fr ] followed,

1288-601: The movement's politics. In 1937, he made La Grande Illusion , one of his better-known films, starring Erich von Stroheim and Jean Gabin . A film on the theme of brotherhood, relating a series of escape attempts by French POWs during World War I, it was enormously successful. It was banned in Germany, and later in Italy, after having won the Best Artistic Ensemble award at the Venice Film Festival . It

1334-473: The profound influence his father had on him and his work. As funds for his film projects were becoming harder to obtain, Renoir continued to write screenplays for income. He published a novel, The Notebooks of Captain Georges , in 1966. Captain Georges is the nostalgic account of a wealthy young man's sentimental education and love for a peasant girl, a theme also explored earlier in his films Diary of

1380-592: The public. Duvivier continued, notwithstanding, to work in France until the end of his life, apart from a short period in Great Britain to shoot Anna Karenina (1948) and to Spain for Black Jack (1950). Under the Sky of Paris (1951) is a highly original film from the point of view of the way the film was cut. In the course of a day in Paris, one follows people whose paths will cross. The same year Duvivier shot

1426-463: The round world spins Dawn and lamplight, midnight, noon. Sun follows day, night stars and moon. The day ends, the end begins." Papers Metadata The Heart of a Nation The Heart of a Nation ( French : Untel père et fils ) is a 1943 French drama film directed by Julien Duvivier who co-wrote screenplay with Marcel Achard and Charles Spaak . The film stars Raimu , Michèle Morgan and Louis Jouvet . The film follows

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1472-620: The same period Renoir produced Clifford Odets ' play The Big Knife in Paris. He also wrote his own play, Orvet , and produced it in Paris featuring Leslie Caron . Renoir made his next films with techniques adapted from live television. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ( Picnic on the Grass , 1959), starring Paul Meurisse and Catherine Rouvel , was filmed on the grounds of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's home in Cagnes-sur-Mer , and Le Testament du docteur Cordelier ( The Testament of Doctor Cordelier , also 1959), starring Jean-Louis Barrault ,

1518-507: The venture, there is little left to save. The original ending of the film involving a killing, was judged too pessimistic, and another, happier ending, was filmed. It was the happier version that was released, though both versions still survive. L'Homme du jour    [ fr ] (1936), with Maurice Chevalier in the lead role is a minor work in the director's canon but Pépé le Moko and Un Carnet de Bal (both 1937) are incontestable summits. Pépé le Moko , which plunges into

1564-491: The works of Charlie Chaplin , D.W. Griffith and others. After the war, Renoir followed his father's suggestion and tried making ceramic art , but he soon set that aside to make films in the attempt, he would later claim, to make his wife, Hessling, a star. He was particularly inspired by Erich von Stroheim 's work. In 1924, Renoir directed Une Vie Sans Joie or Catherine , the first of his nine silent films, most of which starred his first wife, Catherine Hessling , who

1610-512: The young Renoir was educated at fashionable boarding schools , from which, as he later wrote, he frequently ran away. At the outbreak of World War I , Renoir was serving in the French cavalry. Later, after receiving a bullet in his leg, he served as a reconnaissance pilot. His leg injury left him with a permanent limp, but allowed him to develop his interest in the cinema, since he recuperated with his leg elevated while watching films, including

1656-548: Was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. His La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made . He was ranked by the BFI 's Sight & Sound poll of critics in 2002 as the fourth greatest director of all time. Among numerous honours accrued during his lifetime, he received

1702-542: Was about ten. I am still discovering him." Renoir was largely raised by Gabrielle Renard , his nanny and his mother's cousin, with whom he developed a strong bond. Shortly before his birth, she had come to live with the Renoir family. She introduced the young boy to the Guignol puppet shows in Montmartre, which influenced his later film career. He wrote in his 1974 memoirs My Life and My Films , "She taught me to see

1748-427: Was also his father's last model. At this stage, his films did not produce a return. Renoir gradually sold paintings inherited from his father to finance them. During the 1930s Renoir enjoyed great success as a filmmaker. In 1931 he directed his first sound films , On purge bébé ( Baby's Laxative ) and La Chienne ( The Bitch ). The following year he made Boudu Saved from Drowning ( Boudu sauvé des eaux ),

1794-651: Was an influence on the French New Wave , and his memoir is dedicated "to those film-makers who are known to the public as the 'New Wave' and whose preoccupations are mine." Altman said "I learned the rules of the game from The Rules of the Game. " Renoir has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6212 Hollywood Blvd. Several of his ceramics were collected by Albert Barnes , who was a major patron and collector of Renoir's father. These can be found on display beneath Pierre-Auguste Renoir 's paintings at

1840-520: Was heavily reshot and reedited after it fared poorly among preview audiences in California. Both films were poorly received; they were the last films Renoir made in America. At this time, Renoir became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1949 Renoir traveled to India to shoot The River (1951), his first color film. Based on the novel of the same name by Rumer Godden , the film

1886-543: Was his first success. It was also his first 'talkie', as it was of the actor Harry Baur . They worked together many more times in the 1930s. In 1934 Duvivier collaborated with Jean Gabin for the first time in the film Maria Chapdelaine , while for La Bandera (1935), he availed himself of the writing talent of Charles Spaak , who had previously worked with Jacques Feyder , Jean Grémillon , Marc Allégret and Marcel L'Herbier . They too would work together many times from this point onwards. Having made Le Golem (1936),

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1932-536: Was made in the streets of Paris and its suburbs. Renoir's penultimate film, Le Caporal épinglé ( The Elusive Corporal , 1962), with Jean-Pierre Cassel and Claude Brasseur , is set among French POWs during their internment in labor camps by the Nazis during World War II. The film explores the twin human needs for freedom, on the one hand, and emotional and economic security, on the other. Renoir's loving memoir of his father, Renoir, My Father (1962) describes

1978-409: Was preparing a production of his stage play, Carola , with Leslie Caron and Mel Ferrer when he fell ill and was unable to direct. The producer Norman Lloyd , a friend and actor in The Southerner , took over the direction of the play. It was broadcast in the series program Hollywood Television Theater on WNET, Channel 13, New York on 3 February 1973. Renoir's memoir, My Life and My Films ,

2024-412: Was published in 1974. He wrote of the influence exercised by Gabrielle Renard , his nanny and his mother's cousin, with whom he developed a mutual lifelong bond. He concluded his memoirs with the words he had often spoken as a child, "Wait for me, Gabrielle." In 1975 Renoir received a lifetime Academy Award for his contribution to the motion picture industry. That same year a retrospective of his work

2070-675: Was shown at the National Film Theatre in London. Also in 1975, the government of France elevated him to the rank of commander in the Légion d'honneur . Renoir was married to Catherine Hessling , an actress and model. After many years, they divorced. His second wife was Dido Freire. Renoir's son Alain Renoir (1921–2008) became a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley and

2116-466: Was the first foreign language film to receive a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture . He followed it with The Human Beast ( La Bête Humaine ) (1938), a film noir and tragedy based on the novel by Émile Zola and starring Gabin and Simone Simon . It too was a success. In 1939, able to co-finance his own films, Renoir made The Rules of the Game ( La Règle du Jeu ),

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