Born September 15, 1894 the second son of French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he is the cherubic long-haired blonde boy in some of his father’s most famous paintings. His long hair was the cause of ridicule at the numerous boarding schools his parents sent him to, which he continually ran away from.

Wounded in World War I, the bullet in his leg caused him to walk with a limp for the rest of his life. While recuperating, he watched a lot of movies which would inform his future career. After the war, in which he eventually became a reconnaissance pilot, he followed his father’s advice and began to work with ceramics, but soon tired of it. After his father’s death in 1919, he married his father’s last model, Catherine Hessling in 1920. She was the star of the films he made during the 1920s. As none of these films were financially successful, Renoir was forced to sell the paintings he inherited from his father to finance them.

Separated from Hessling, from he would not become divorced until 1943, editor Marguerite Renoir, with whom he first worked on 1931’s La Chienne, became his life partner, changing her name to hers although they never actually married.

La Chienne, which was later remade by Fritz Lang in 1945 as Scarlet Street, was an international success. Other early 1930s successes include Boudou Saved from Drowning, remade by Paul Mazursky in 1986 as Down and Out in Beverly Hills and The Crime of Monsieur Lange. His 1937 film Grand Illusion, still considered one of the great anti-war films, became the first foreign language film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar upon its U.S. release the following year.

1938’s acclaimed La Bete Humaine from the novel by Emile Zola was remade by Fritz Lang as in 1954 Human Desire.

Renoir’s 1939 film, The Rules of the Game was met with derision by its Parisian audience and subsequently banned. By this time he was working on a planned film version of Tosca with Dido Friere, a script girl on The Rules of the Game who would become his second wife in 1944. The film was never made and the couple fled France for the U.S. after the Nazi invasion in May, 1940. They would eventually become naturalized U.S. cirtizens.

His first completed Hollywood films, 1941’s Swamp Water and 1943’s This Land Is Mine were well received, but it was his third, 1945’s The Southerner that would earn him his first and only Oscar nomination. Subsequent successes included 1946’s Diary of a Chambermaid and 1947’s The Woman on the Beach.

In 1949 Renoir journeyed to India to make one his most acclaimed films, The River. A series of Technicolor comedies, 1952’s The Golden Coach; 1954’s French Cancan and 1956’s Elena and Her Men AKA Paris Does Strange Things would prove to be his last commercial successes.

The Rules of the Game released to generally good reviews despite its truncated form in the U.S. in 1950 would finally achieve unwavering acclaim when almost completely restored in 1959. That version routinely places at the top of critics’ and fellow directors’ lists of the greatest films ever made, rivaled only by Citizen Kane.

An ill Jean Renoir was unable to attend the 1974 Academy Awards at which he was given an honorary Oscar presented by Ingrid Bergman for his life’s work. He died in Beverly Hills in 1979 at 84, his body returned to France to be buried in the family crypt.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

GRAND ILLUSION (1937)

The title of Renoir’s anti-fascist war movie was a play on words of a popular pre-World War I book that opined that a prolonged European war could not happen. Renoir’s humanistic insights are on full display as they chronicle the relationship between French and German aristocrats at war, both knowing their way of life is ending. The Frenchman accepts it. The German does not, at least not at first. The brilliant lead performances of Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay and Erich von Stroheim are matched by a sterling supporting cast.

THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939 )

Renoir’s acknowledged masterpiece was ridiculed by the Parisian whose life was mocked in the film, the film was immediately by the French, cut by Renoir, re-released and banned again by the Nazis during the occupation of France. The film was not shown again publicly until 1950 when it opened in the U.S. in a truncated format. Restored to most of its original length in 1959, that is the version we are familiar with today.

Nora Gregor, a real life Austrian princess and Marcel Dalio, a French Jew have the leads to the consternation of the French bourgeoisie of the time.

THIS LAND IS MINE (1943)

Arguably Renoir’s best Hollywood film, it takes place in an un-named occupied European country, clearly meant to be France even if none of the actors look or sound French. Charles Laughton has his best role of the decade as a timid schoolteacher, with strong support from Maureen O’Hara, George Sanders, Walter Slezak, Kent Smith and Una O’Connor at her scene chewing best as Laughton’s over-protective mother.

THE SOUTHERNER (1962 )

Zachary Scott is the poor farmer, Betty Field his wife and Beulah Bondi his whiny, selfish grandmother in this superb rendition of George Sessions Perry’s novel. Almost as good as The Grapes of Wrath in its evocation of the life of the poor in the 1940s, it’s a darker, bleaker tale. Scott, who was the poor man’s Clark Gable, never had a better role and Bondi, who could play just about any elderly character, good, bad or indifferent, is the polar opposite of Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, the role she was given by John Ford only to have it taken away by Daryl Zanuck who preferred Fox contract player Jane Darwell.

THE RIVER (1951)

Renoir’s first color film is from Rumer Godden’s novel which follows the lives of three young girls in India, their fascination with a handsome soldier and the fascination of a young boy with cobras. Like Powell and Pressburger’s 1947 film of Godden’s Black Narcissus, the country itself is a character in the story, and like that earlier film, the breathtaking cinematography is one of the film’s stars. The human stars are Nora Swinburne and Esmond Knight.

JEAN RENOIR AND OSCAR

• Baby Doll (1945)
• Honorary Award (1974) – Oscar for being a genius who, with grace, responsibility and enviable devotion through silent film, sound film, feature, documentary and television has won the world’s admiration. Jean Renoir was not present at the ceremony. Presenter Ingrid Bergman accepted the award on his behalf.