Renoir, Jean (zhäN rənwär`), 1894–1979, French film director and writer, b. Paris; son of Pierre Auguste Renoir. He made his first film in 1926. Gathering around him a devoted coterie of actors and technicians, Renoir developed a collective approach to filmmaking, favoring improvisational acting, open-air shooting, and stories stressing the changeable nature of morality. Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937), a balanced, compassionate study of people in time of war, is considered one of the greatest motion pictures ever made.

Renoir worked in Hollywood during World War II, but never fully adapted to studio filmmaking. His postwar French films play on the slippery relationship between film and theater. His films include The Crime of M. Lange (1935), A Day in the Country (1936), The Human Beast (1938), The Rules of the Game (1939), The Southerner (1944), Diary of a Chambermaid (1945), The River (1951), and Picnic on the Grass (1959). Renoir wrote the biography Renoir, My Father (tr. 1962) and a novel, The Notebooks of Captain Georges (tr. 1966).

Bibliography

See his autobiography, My Life and My Films (1974, repr. 1991); biographies by C. Bertin (1986) and R. Bergan (1994); study by A. Bazin (tr. 1973); C. Faulkner, The Social Cinema of Jean Renoir (1986).

Renoir, Jean

Jean Renoir

(credit: Globe Photos)

(born Sept. 15, 1894, Paris, France—died Feb. 12, 1979, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) French film director. The son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he discovered a passion for the cinema while recovering from wounds suffered in World War I. He directed his first film, La Fille de l'eau, in 1924. His films, in both silent and later eras, were noted for their deep appreciation for the unpredictability of human character. He cowrote the screenplays for many of his films, including Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), Madame Bovary (1934), The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), and La Bête humaine (1938) as well as his two masterpieces, Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939). He lived in the U.S. (1940–51), where he directed The Southerner (1945), The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and The River (1951).