A Companion to Jean Renoir / Edition 1 available in Hardcover, eBook
A Companion to Jean Renoir / Edition 1
- ISBN-10:
- 1444338536
- ISBN-13:
- 9781444338539
- Pub. Date:
- 06/04/2013
- Publisher:
- Wiley
A Companion to Jean Renoir / Edition 1
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“An extraordinary collection of essays that more than fulfills the aims of its editors, Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau. The essays offer exciting, original work from younger scholars as well as long-established authorities, all of which offer invaluable insights into the films, writings, and life of Jean Renoir. Receiving particular attention are questions about the singularity or multiplicity of what the editors call the many ‘Renoirs’ (French, American, Indian; even transnational), especially from the early 1930s through the early 1960s. Whether mining relatively unexplored archive materials, deploying newly current methodological approaches, interrogating one of a wide range of topics and issues, or engaging in close textual analysis, the contributors construct a tantalizing series of innovative ‘road maps’ for future researchers to pursue.”
Richard Abel, University of Michigan
“Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau have brought together essays that bring new perspectives to both the best-known and the lesser-known of Renoir’s films. Both French cinema specialists and viewers new to Renoir’s work will find much of interest in this outstanding collection.”
Judith Mayne, Ohio State University
Dubbed simply “the best director”’ by François Truffaut, Jean Renoir is a towering figure in world film history. This exhaustive survey of his work and life features a comprehensive analysis of his films from the multiple critical perspectives of the world’s leading Renoir scholars. Renoir’s career spanned four decades and four countries and included an extraordinary body of films, some of which – La Grande illusion (1937) and La Règle du jeu (1939) – are universally recognized masterpieces. Fathered by the celebrated painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the filmmaker lived through much of the twentieth century, beginning his career in the silent era and ending it in full Technicolor. His films are notable for their paradoxical combination of strong internal coherence and thematic breadth and diversity, and they provide a rich source for today’s scholars of film history and French culture.
This handbook, the largest volume on Renoir ever produced in the English language, ranges in scope from extreme close-up analysis of individual films to long-shot explorations of his aesthetics and the social and cultural contexts in which he worked. The most ambitious critical study of Renoir to date, this book will appeal to film enthusiasts as much as scholars and specialists.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781444338539 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Wiley |
Publication date: | 06/04/2013 |
Series: | Wiley Blackwell Companions to Film Directors , #8 |
Pages: | 640 |
Product dimensions: | 7.00(w) x 9.80(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Ginette Vincendeau is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London, UK. Among her books are Jean Gabin: anatomie d’un mythe, with Claude Gauteur (1993, 2006), Pépé le Moko (1998), Stars and Stardom in French Cinema (2000), Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris (2003), and La Haine (2005). She co-edited Journeys of Desire: European Actors in Hollywood (2006) and The New French Wave: Critical Landmarks (2009).
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Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors viiiAcknowledgments xv
Notes on the Text xvii
Introduction: Renoir In and Out of His Time 1 Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau
Part I Renoir in Close-Up 13
Section 1 Reassessing Renoir’s Aesthetics 15
1 Shooting in Deep Time: The Mise en Scène of History in Renoir’s Films of the 1930s 16 Martin O’Shaughnessy
2 The Exception and the Norm: Relocating Renoir’s Sound and Music 35 Charles O’Brien
3 The Invention of French Talking Cinema: Language in Renoir’s Early Sound Films 53 Michel Marie
4 Renoir and His Actors: The Freedom of Puppets 72 Christophe Damour
5 Design at Work: Renoir’s Costume Dramas of the 1950s 88 Susan Hayward
Section 2 Critical Focus on Selected Films 107
6 Sur un air de Charleston, Nana, La Petite Marchande d’allumettes, Tire au flanc: Renoir and the Ethics of Play 108 Anne M. Kern
7 La Grande Illusion: Sound, Silence, and the Displacement of Emotion 121 Valerie Orpen
8 La Bête humaine: Double Murder at the Station at Le Havre 131 Olivier Curchod
9 La Règle du jeu: Lies, Truth, and Irresolution (A Critical Round Table) 144 Christopher Faulkner, Martin O’Shaughnessy, and V. F. Perkins
10 The River: Beneath the Surface with André Bazin 166 Prakash Younger
Part II Renoir: The Wider View 177
Section 1 Renoir’s Filmmaking and the Arts 179
11 Seeing with His Own Eyes: Renoir and Photography 180 Alastair Phillips
12 Popular Songs in Renoir’s Films of the 1930s 199 Kelley Conway
13 Renoir and the Popular Theater of His Time 219 Geneviève Sellier
14 Theatricality and Spectacle in La Règle du jeu, Le Carrosse d’or, and Éléna et les hommes 237 Thomas Elsaesser
15 French Cancan: A Song and Dance about Women 255 Ginette Vincendeau
16 Social Roles/Political Responsibilities: The Evolving Figure of the Artist in Renoir’s Films, 1928–1939 270 Charles Musser
Section 2 Renoir’s Place in the Critical Canon 291
17 Seeing through Renoir, Seen through Bazin 292 Dudley Andrew
18 Henri Agel’s Cinema of Contemplation: Renoir and Philosophy 313 Sarah Cooper
19 Renoir and the French Communist Party: The Grand Disillusion 328 Laurent Marie
20 “Better than a Masterpiece”: Revisiting the Reception of La Règle du jeu 347 Claude Gauteur
21 Renoir and the French New Wave 356 Richard Neupert
22 Renoir between the Public, the Professors, and the Polls 375 Ian Christie
Part III Renoir, a National and a Transnational Figure 395
Section 1 Renoir, the Chronicler of French Society 397
23 Renoir under the Popular Front: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Paradoxes of Engagement 398 Brett Bowles
24 The Performance of History in La Marseillaise 425 Tom Brown
25 Toni: A Regional Melodrama of Failed Masculinity 444 Keith Reader
26 La Règle du jeu: A Document of French Everyday Life 454 Christopher Faulkner
27 Renoir’s Jews in Context 474 Maureen Turim
Section 2 Renoir, the Transnational Figure 493
28 Renoir’s War 494 Julian Jackson
29 Interconnected Sites of Struggle: Resituating Renoir’s Career in Hollywood 514 Elizabeth Vitanza
30 The Southerner: Touching Relationships 533 Edward Gallafent
31 The Woman on the Beach: Renoir’s Dark Lady 544 Jean-Loup Bourget
32 Remaking Renoir in Hollywood 555 Lucy Mazdon
Filmography 572
Select Bibliography 585
Index 592
What People are Saying About This
“Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau have brought together essays that bring new perspectives to both the best-known and the lesser-known of Renoir’s films. Both French cinema specialists and viewers new to Renoir’s work will find much of interest in this outstanding collection.” Judith Mayne, Ohio State University
“An extraordinary collection of essays that more than fulfills the aims of its editors, Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau. The essays offer exciting, original work from younger scholars as well as long-established authorities, all of which offer invaluable insights into the films, writings, and life of Jean Renoir. Receiving particular attention are questions about the singularity or multiplicity of what the editors call the many ‘Renoirs’ (French, American, Indian; even transnational), especially from the early 1930s through the early 1960s. Whether mining relatively unexplored archive materials, deploying newly current methodological approaches, interrogating one of a wide range of topics and issues, or engaging in close textual analysis, the contributors construct a tantalizing series of innovative ‘road maps’ for future researchers to pursue.” Richard Abel, University of Michigan