Skip to main content Skip to Search Box
Listen
Email

Topic Pages contain an overview, definitions, biographies, related topics, images, plus links to relevant articles and other content provided by your library. Topic Page: Renoir, Jean, 1894-1979

Definition: Renoir, Jean from Philip's Encyclopedia

French film director and actor, son of Auguste Renoir. His best-known films are La Grande Ilusion (1937), and La Règle du Jeu (1939). Renoir's work is noted for its lyric response to nature and humanity and its subtle style. Other films include Nana (1926), Madame Bovary (1934), French Cancan (1955) and C'est la Revolution (1967).

Image from: Still from Jean Renoir’s 1943 film This Land Is... in France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History
Summary Article: Renoir, Jean
from The Columbia Encyclopedia

(zhäN rӘnwär'), 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).

  • 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);.
  • Faulkner, C. , The Social Cinema of Jean Renoir (1986).
"Renoir, Jean." In The Columbia Encyclopedia, by Paul Lagasse, and Columbia University. 8th ed. Columbia University Press, 2018. https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/renoir_jean_1894_1979
Renoir, Jean. (2018). In P. Lagasse & Columbia University, The Columbia encyclopedia. (8th ed.). [Online]. New York: Columbia University Press. Available from: https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/renoir_jean_1894_1979 [Accessed 20 May 2019].
"Renoir, Jean." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Paul Lagasse, and Columbia University, Columbia University Press, 8th edition, 2018. Credo Reference, https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/renoir_jean_1894_1979. Accessed 20 May 2019.
The Columbia Encyclopedia, © Columbia University Press 2018

Related Articles

Full text Article RENOIR, JEAN (1894-1979)
France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History

One of the greatest French film directors of the classic era and of “poetic realism” who had a considerable impact on international filmmaking. ...

Full text Article Renoir, Jean (1894-1979)
Chambers Film Factfinder

American, born in Paris, France. The son of impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he studied philosophy and mathematics before serving in...

See more from Credo