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Jean Renoir: La Chienne
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Renoir planned the leading roles in La Chienne (1931) for Catherine Hessling and Michel Simon. His decision not to abandon the project when the studio insisted on casting not his wife but an actress they had under contract caused the final breakdown of his marriage.
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In 1913, Jean enlisted in a Dragoon regiment for three years and served as both a cavalry officer and a pilot. In the War he was wounded several times, including a serious leg injury. His mother hastened to his side and forbade amputation (which would have killed him)... the journey in her poor state of health (she had diabetes) led to her death a short time later. His injury left him with a permanent limp and pain. Even 40 years later the wound could suddenly start bleeding.
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In 1966 Jacques Rivette made a three-part TV documentary titled Jean Renoir, the Boss, and its 90-minute centerpiece has rarely been seen since. "A Portrait of Michel Simon by Jean Renoir, or A Portrait of Jean Renoir by Michel Simon, or The Direction of Actors: Dialogue," screening on DVD this week at Alliance Francaise, is a missing link that's key to understanding Rivette's work. It's a raw record of the after-dinner talk between one of the world's greatest directors and his greatest actor, both in their early 70s, punctuated by clips from the five films they worked on together -- Tire-au-Flanc (1928), On Purge Bébé (1931), La Chienne (1931), Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932), and Tosca (1941). It ... includes occasional remarks by Rivette, the documentary's producers (Janine Bazin and Andre S. Labarthe), and the stills photographer (the distinguished Henri Cartier-Bresson). The joy Renoir and Simon clearly share at being reunited is complemented by Rivette's determination to exclude nothing, so that the "direction of actors" applies to him as much as to his two principals, each of whom can be said to be directing the other. For both Renoir and Rivette, direction requires a profound open-mindedness, alertness, and acceptance.
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In 1946, Renoir became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In that year he made Diary of a Chambermaid, an adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel, Le Journal d'une femme de chambre, starring Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith. The Woman on the Beach (1947) starring Joan Bennett and Robert Ryan was heavily reshot and reedited after it fared poorly among preview audiences in California. Both films were poorly received and were the last films Renoir made in America.
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The same goes for Jean Renoir, recorded at Momentum Studio a year later; beefed up by the presence of guitarist Richard Bolton and bassist Danny Manners, JR picked up where Rainfall had stopped. "A sampla-delic album" was how it was described by the Japanese press at the time. And so it is, with some great vocal support from Cathal Coghlan (Microdisney, Fatima Mansions) on two of the star tracks, Hunter and True Men. The bonus track is Eusebio, one of the handful of songs Louis has written "to order" for Jim Phelan's Exotica label.
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Renoir is recognised as the cinema’s great humanist. His is a world where “everyone has his reasons”. It’s a “horizontal” view of life – in this film, the two aristocrats De Boieldieu and Von Rauffenstein strike up a friendship, de Boieldieu finding he has more in common with the enemy aristocrat than he does with the mechanic on his own side. Renoir’s directional style emphasises his themes. His camera is on the move, his long takes and deep focus (several years before Citizen Kane made the technique famous) emphasising inclusion and unity, where another director might have cut, to emphasise conflict. At a time when so many films were studio-bound, Renoir’s unforced naturalism seems very modern even sixty or more years later.
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La Chienne