The son of the great impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean Renoir was also a master of his medium: cinema. After making his mark in the early thirties with two very different films, the anarchic send-up of the bourgeoisie BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING and the popular-front Gorky adaptation THE LOWER DEPTHS, Renoir closed out the decade with a critical humanistic study of French society that routinely turns up near the top of lists of the greatest films ever made: THE RULES OF THE GAME. After a brief, unfulfilling Hollywood stint during World War II, Renoir traveled to India to make his first Technicolor film, THE RIVER, and then returned to Europe in the early fifties to direct three visually dazzling explorations of theater, THE GOLDEN COACH, FRENCH CANCAN, and ELENA AND HER MEN. Renoir persisted in his cinematic pursuits until the late sixties, when he decided to dedicate himself solely to writing, leaving the future of the medium to those who looked to him in reverence.
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1931 • France
Starring Michel Simon, Janie Marèse, Georges Flamant
Jean Renoir's ruthless love triangle tale, his second sound film, is a true precursor to his brilliantly bitter THE RULES OF THE GAME, displaying all of the filmmaker's visual genius and fully imbued wit...
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1931 • France
Starring Michel Simon
Based on a comic one-act play by Georges Feydeau, the hour-long ON PURGE BÉBÉ is Jean Renoir’s first sound film. It was made in 1931, the same year as LA CHIENNE.
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1932 • France
Starring Michel Simon, Charles Granval, Marcelle Hainia
Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well-to-do bookseller, Edouard Les...
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1936 • France
Starring Jean Gabin, Louis Jouvet
In Jean Renoir’s lightened adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s play, a thief and a destitute Baron form a friendship as the inhabitants of a Parisian slum go about their lives.
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1936 • France
Starring Sylvia Bataille, Georges D’Arnoux, Jane Marken
This bittersweet film from Jean Renoir, based on a story by Guy de Maupassant, is a tenderly comic idyll about a city family’s picnic in the French countryside and the romancing of the mother and grow...
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1937 • France
Starring Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim
One of the very first prison escape movies, GRAND ILLUSION is hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. Jean Renoir’s antiwar masterpiece stars Jean Gabin and Pierre Fresnay as French soldiers he...
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1938 • France
Starring Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Julien Carette
Based on the classic Emile Zola novel, Jean Renoir’s LA BÊTE HUMAINE was one of the legendary director’s greatest popular successes, and earned star Jean Gabin a permanent place in the hearts of his country...
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1939 • France
Starring Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély
Considered one of the greatest films ever made, THE RULES OF THE GAME (LA RÈGLE DU JEU), by Jean Renoir, is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend a...
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1951 • France, United Kingdom, India, United States
Starring Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields
Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature, shot entirely on location in India, is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the fi...
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1953 • Italy
Starring Anna Magnani, Odoardo Spadaro, Nada Fiorelli
THE GOLDEN COACH (LE CARROSSE D’OR) is a ravishing eighteenth-century comic fantasy about a viceroy who receives an exquisite golden coach, and gives it to the tempestuous star of a touring commedia dell...
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1955 • France, Italy
Starring Jean Gabin, Françoise Arnoul, María Félix
Nineteenth-century Paris comes vibrantly alive in Jean Renoir’s exhilarating tale of the opening of the world-renowned Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin plays the wily impresario Danglard, who makes the canc...
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1956 • France, Italy
Starring Ingrid Bergman, Jean Marais, Mel Ferrer
Set amid the military maneuvers and Quatorze Juillet carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir’s delirious romantic comedy ELENA AND HER MEN (ELENA ET LES HOMMES) stars a radiant Ingrid Ber...
