Postwar Renoir: Film and the Memory of Violence

This book re-assesses director Jean Renoir’s work between his departure from France in 1940 and his death in 1979, and contributes to the debate over how the medium of film registers the impact of trauma.

The 1930s ended in catastrophe for both for Renoir and for France: La Règle du jeu was a critical and commercial disaster on its release in July 1939 and in 1940 France was occupied by Germany. Even so, Renoir continued to innovate and experiment with his post-war work, yet the thirteen fi...