Phillips A., Vincendeau G. (eds.) A Companion to Jean Renoir

John Wiley & Sons, 2013. - 616 p.
François Truffaut called him, simply, ‘the best’. Jean Renoir is a towering figure in world cinema and fully justifies this monumental survey that includes contributions from leading international film scholars and comprehensively analyzes Renoir’s life and career from numerous critical perspectives.Introduction: Renoir In and Out of His Time (by Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau).
Reassessing Renoir’s Aesthetics
Shooting in Deep Time: The Mise en Scène of History in Renoir’s Films of the 1930s (by Martin O’Shaughnessy).
The Exception and the Norm: Relocating Renoir’s Sound and Music (by Charles O’Brien).
The Invention of French Talking Cinema: Language in Renoir’s Early Sound Films (by Michel Marie).
Renoir and His Actors: The Freedom of Puppets (by Christophe Damour).
Design at Work: Renoir’s Costume Dramas of the 1950s (by Susan Hayward).
Critical Focus on Selected Films
Sur un air de Charleston, Nana, La Petite Marchande d’allumettes, Tire au flanc: Renoir and the Ethics of Play (by Anne M. Kern).
La Grande Illusion: Sound, Silence, and the Displacement of Emotion (by Valerie Orpen).
La Bête humaine: Double Murder at the Station at Le Havre (by Olivier Curchod).
La Règle du jeu: Lies, Truth, and Irresolution (A Critical Round Table) (by Christopher Faulkner, Martin O’Shaughnessy, and V. F. Perkins).
The River: Beneath the Surface with André Bazin (by Prakash Younger).
Renoir’s Filmmaking and the Arts
Seeing with His Own Eyes: Renoir and Photography (by Alastair Phillips).
Popular Songs in Renoir’s Films of the 1930s (by Kelley Conway).
Renoir and the Popular Theater of His Time (by Geneviève Sellier).
Theatricality and Spectacle in La Règle du jeu, Le Carrosse d’or, and Éléna et les hommes (by Thomas Elsaesser).
French Cancan: A Song and Dance about Women (by Ginette Vincendeau).
Social Roles/Political Responsibilities: The Evolving Figure of the Artist in Renoir’s Films, 1928–1939 (by Charles Musser).
Renoir’s Place in the Critical Canon
Seeing through Renoir, Seen through Bazin (by Dudley Andrew).
Henri Agel’s Cinema of Contemplation: Renoir and Philosophy (by Sarah Cooper).
Renoir and the French Communist Party: The Grand Disillusion (by Laurent Marie).
Better than a Masterpiece: Revisiting the Reception of La Règle du jeu (by Claude Gauteur).
Renoir and the French New Wave (by Richard Neupert).
Renoir between the Public, the Professors, and the Polls (by Ian Christie).
Renoir, the Chronicler of French Society
Renoir under the Popular Front: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Paradoxes of Engagement (by Brett Bowles).
The Performance of History in La Marseillaise (by Tom Brown).
Toni: A Regional Melodrama of Failed Masculinity (by Keith Reader).
La Règle du jeu: A Document of French Everyday Life (by Christopher Faulkner).
Renoir’s Jews in Context (by Maureen Turim).
Renoir, the Transnational Figure
Renoir’s War (by Julian Jackson).
Interconnected Sites of Struggle: Resituating Renoir’s Career in Hollywood (by Elizabeth Vitanza).
The Southerner: Touching Relationships (by Edward Gallafent).
The Woman on the Beach: Renoir’s Dark Lady (by Jean-Loup Bourget).
Remaking Renoir in Hollywood (by Lucy Mazdon).