Jean Renoir
- hearthesilence
- Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
- Location: NYC
Re: Jean Renoir
MoMA screened Le petit théâtre de Jean Renoir tonight - it was a 35mm print from their own collection, and it looked beautiful. The interlude with Jeanne Moreau looked particularly stunning. This is actually the first time I've seen a good, color film projection of anything with Moreau - shot and well-lit on an actual stage, it was an optimal photographic set-up - and it was startling how lifelike she looked when the camera floated into close-up. Utterly charming and personal, it has its champions in critics like Dave Kehr, but it feels undervalued. It may have been very late in the game, and it may have been made for television, but Renoir's abilities as a filmmaker hardly feels diminished here. More importantly, it's through and through a Jean Renoir film - it's difficult picturing anyone else making it. As his last film, it brings to mind something that was said around the time Chabrol, Rohmer and other French filmmaking giants were passing away - it's profoundly sad knowing that there won't be any more films made through that unique voice that's now been silenced.
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: Jean Renoir
Filling in some gaps with Renoir, in order of preference:
La vie est à nous (1936) A collective film, with contributions from Jacques Becker as well as Renoir, this is a series of vignettes extolling the virtues of belonging to the French communist party. I understand people who out of hand don't like propaganda like this, but on an objective level, this is extremely well-made and convincing material and a best case scenario for this kind of thing. BFI included it on one of their recent Renoir Blu-ray upgrades, can't recall which (none of the rest of these titles are commercial available with subs, to my knowledge)
Le bled (1929) A perfectly fine pastoral romance for the first two acts and then a wild, totally unexpected action spectacle for the final act. I guarantee you will not believe this is a Renoir film by the end of it, and you have to think he must have proudly showed this one off for execs when he moved to Hollywood. As for the story? Another conservative tale of a lazy gadabout going straight after experiencing the toil of Just Folks. But this isn't a movie you watch for the plot anyways, so...
Tire au flanc (1928) Renoir's military comedy, remade in spirit (and name) by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy three-plus decades later, starts with a series of laugh out loud physical gags and stunts that completely cow the rest of the film, which soon settles into much more boring hijinx. I like the "remake" better.
Chotard et Cie (1933) Broad and unfunny comedy with Fernand Charpin as a capitalist grocer with exactly one setting: Loud. I couldn't help but think this part needed a completely different comic interpretation (and energy level), namely that of Charpin's frequent co-star Raimu. But even worse is Georges Pomiès' character, the annoyingly lazy and stupid husband of Charpin's daughter who is depicted as borderline mentally retarded in his actions but somehow is then later in the film, unbelievably, the recipient of a genius grant for a novel he wrote. There's a good comic idea here somewhere about the capitalist dad trying to goad his creative son in law with a work ethic befitting retail or manual labor rather than artistic ventures, but it's obscured by the noise and the contrived screenplay. Some fun trick shots and long takes, sure, but ultimately not at the service of much.
La vie est à nous (1936) A collective film, with contributions from Jacques Becker as well as Renoir, this is a series of vignettes extolling the virtues of belonging to the French communist party. I understand people who out of hand don't like propaganda like this, but on an objective level, this is extremely well-made and convincing material and a best case scenario for this kind of thing. BFI included it on one of their recent Renoir Blu-ray upgrades, can't recall which (none of the rest of these titles are commercial available with subs, to my knowledge)
Le bled (1929) A perfectly fine pastoral romance for the first two acts and then a wild, totally unexpected action spectacle for the final act. I guarantee you will not believe this is a Renoir film by the end of it, and you have to think he must have proudly showed this one off for execs when he moved to Hollywood. As for the story? Another conservative tale of a lazy gadabout going straight after experiencing the toil of Just Folks. But this isn't a movie you watch for the plot anyways, so...
Tire au flanc (1928) Renoir's military comedy, remade in spirit (and name) by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy three-plus decades later, starts with a series of laugh out loud physical gags and stunts that completely cow the rest of the film, which soon settles into much more boring hijinx. I like the "remake" better.
Chotard et Cie (1933) Broad and unfunny comedy with Fernand Charpin as a capitalist grocer with exactly one setting: Loud. I couldn't help but think this part needed a completely different comic interpretation (and energy level), namely that of Charpin's frequent co-star Raimu. But even worse is Georges Pomiès' character, the annoyingly lazy and stupid husband of Charpin's daughter who is depicted as borderline mentally retarded in his actions but somehow is then later in the film, unbelievably, the recipient of a genius grant for a novel he wrote. There's a good comic idea here somewhere about the capitalist dad trying to goad his creative son in law with a work ethic befitting retail or manual labor rather than artistic ventures, but it's obscured by the noise and the contrived screenplay. Some fun trick shots and long takes, sure, but ultimately not at the service of much.