
Jean Renoir
Director · 1894 – 1979 · Paris, France
Jean Renoir (15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) 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. As an author, he wrote the definitive biography of his father, the painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Renoir, My Father (1962). In the 1930s, Renoir was associated with the Popular Front, and several of his films reflect the movement's left-wing politics and deal with social issues as well as class disparities. He was perhaps the most significant director of the poetic realism movement. The satirical comedy-drama film The Rules of the Game (1939) is often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made; it is the only film to earn a place among the top ten films in the respected British Film Institute's Sight & Sound decennial critics' poll for every decade from the poll's inception in 1952 through the 2012 list. Other important works are Grand Illusion (1937), A Day in the Country (1946) and The River (1951). Andrew Sarris in his influential book of film criticism The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968 included him in the "pantheon" of the 14 greatest film directors who had worked in the United States.
Movies21
Movie7.2DocumentaryEric Rohmer leads a conversation with Jean Renoir and Henri Langlois on the art of filmmaker Louis Lumière.
Louis Lumière
1968 · 11 votes
Movie7.5DramaComedyThe Marquis de la Chesnaye and his wife host a weekend gala where a variety of complicated romantic and social entanglements between guests and servants lead to tragedy, all against the backdrop of a looming war.
Movie7.1DramaRomanceReturning by train to the French port of Le Havre, Jacques Lantier, a tormented railwayman, meets by chance the impulsive stationmaster Roubard and Séverine, his wife.
La Bête humaine
1938 · 249 votes
Movie6.7DocumentaryJoris Ivens’s advocacy documentary for the Republican cause intercuts a besieged Madrid with a nearby village digging an irrigation canal, linking the war to bread, land, and survival. Produced by the writers’ collective Contemporary Historians, edited by Helen van Dongen, scored by Marc Blitzstein, and narrated in its U.S. version by Ernest Hemingway (after an initial Orson Welles track), it blends frontline reportage with persuasion against Franco’s forces and their German–Italian backers.
The Spanish Earth
1937 · 22 votes
Movie4.8ComedyDramaA tennis champ falls in with the Hollywood crowd, finds himself being corrupted by the life in the fast lane.
The Christian Licorice Store
1971 · 8 votes
Movie7.3DramaRomanceThe family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The daughter falls in love with a man at the inn, where they spend the day.
Movie5.8DocumentaryThis portrait of the world-famous French director based on his personal correspondance reveals the little known insurgent side of his personnality. Featuring interviews with close collaborators, friends and family, this definitive documentary tells his intimate story, from the streets of Paris to the filmmaking accolades and high profile marriages at the height of his career.
François Truffaut l'insoumis
2014 · 4 votes
Movie5.3DocumentaryDocumentary portrait of Henri Langlois, co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française.
Langlois
1970 · 3 votes
Movie6.8DramaTV MovieThree vignettes and a musical interlude showcase acclaimed auteur Jean Renoir's eclectic range at the end of his career: the relationship between an old man and an old woman, both homeless; an opera-like story of a woman obsessed with polishing her floors; Jeanne Moreau performs 'When Love Dies'; and an elderly man and his young wife coming to terms when she has an affair with a man her own age.
Movie5.1DramaLa P’tite Lili is a silent short drama depicting the fate of a young orphaned girl in the working-class districts of Paris. The film follows Lili, a teenage girl marked by innocence and vulnerability, as she is drawn into the city’s underworld after encountering a man who exploits her circumstances. Told through impressionistic visual style rather than dialogue, the film presents a tragic portrait of social marginalization and moral collapse within an urban environment.
La P’tite Lili
1927 · 14 votes
Movie8.5DocumentaryPart one of a BBC documentary about Jean Renoir.
Movie5.0DocumentaryCinéastes de notre temps : Erich von Stroheim
2012 · 1 votes
Movie6.8DramaAbout the conflict between social classes through the life of the unhappy Catherine Ferrand, an orphan girl, who is a victim of the jealousy of women and the greed of men.
Movie6.6DocumentaryHistoryOn January 31, 1857, the French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) took his place in the dock for contempt of public morality and religion. The accused, the real one, is, through him, Emma Bovary, heroine with a thousand faces and a thousand desires, guilty without doubt of an unforgivable desire to live.
Movie10.0DocumentaryThe fascinating story of a man destined to be only a son of and who sought all his life to become "someone" by getting rid of the overwhelming image of his genius as a father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Quand Jean devint Renoir
2017 · 1 votes
Movie7.7DocumentaryHistoryLe Parti du cinéma
2021 · 3 votes
Movie7.0DocumentaryA example of Jean Renoir's talents as a director as he works Gisèle Braunberger into the right frame of mind.
Movie9.0DocumentaryThe first of three documentaries by Rivette on Jean Renoir.
Movie7.0DramaThis is 1929: the little red riding hood is still with us and her life is more complicated than ever. She still has to go through the forest and she once again comes up against a wolf. This time around the big bad wolf has become a lecherous tramp who keeps stalking the girl trying to wolf her down ... in his own way of course.
Movie6.8DocumentaryWith family connections to some famous French artists, writers, and musicians of the time, Sacha Guitry decided to film the individuals in action, to celebrate the greatness of his culture, threatened by Germany in the ongoing Great War.
MovieDocumentaryThree-part interview with French film director Jean Renoir, conducted by French New Wave director Jacques Rivette.
Series3
TV8.0Talk ShowDiscorama
1959 · 1 votes
TV8.7DocumentaryFamilyCinépanorama
1956 · 3 votes
- TV9.0Documentary
Produced for television by Claude-Jean Philippe, the « Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma », recounts the history of French cinema from its birth to the beginning of the 1960s. With commentary read by Jean Rochefort.
Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma
1978 · 1 votes