Jean Renoir (French: [ʁənwaʁ]; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. His films Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. As an author, he wrote the definitive biography of his father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Renoir, My Father (1962). Jean Renoir was ranked by the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of critics as the fourth greatest director of all time.
[on Orson Welles]: Orson Welles is an animal made for the screen and the stage. When he steps before a camera, it is as if the rest of the world ceases to exist. He is a citizen of the screen.
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It's a war film; nevertheless there's not a mention of war in it. Beneath its benign appearance, this story strikes at the very structure of our society. (on his film "The Rules of the Game")
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I believe that perfection handicaps cinema.
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A director only makes one film in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again.
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The saving grace of the cinema is that with patience and a little love we may arrive at that wonderfully complex creature which is called man.
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The Western is always the same, which gives the director tremendous freedom.
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My dream is of a craftsman's cinema in which the author can express himself as directly as the painter in his paintings or the writer in his books.
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Fact
1
His father was fifty-three when he was born.
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Renoir was originally set to direct the Deanna Durbin vehicle "The Amazing Mrs. Holliday," but was replaced by Bruce Manning.
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Charlie Chaplin named him as "the greatest film director in the world".
He had extremely long hair as a small child which was not cut at the insistence of his father, Auguste Renoir. His hair made him look like a little girl and caused him to be teased mercilessly. Little Jean with his long hair was depicted famously in one of his father's paintings. Jean was greatly relieved to go away for school because he knew they required boys to have short hair and they would cut his.
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Darryl F. Zanuck, Renoir's sometimes producer during Renoir's mixed period making films in Hollywood said "Renoir has plenty of talent, but he's not one of us.".
Profiled in "Encyclopedia of French Film Directors" by Philippe Rege (Scarecrow Press).
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He fought in the French army during World War I and was wounded in battle. His wounds never healed properly and he suffered from it for the rest of his life.
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Orson Welles frequently cited him as the greatest film director of all time.
He once said that no other Hollywood director understood people better than Leo McCarey.
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Biography in John Wakeman, editor, "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945," pp. 923-947. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
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He frequently acted in his own movies, earning praise for his performances as lovable bear-like lugs (he even dressed up like a bear in The Rules of the Game (1939)).
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Was voted the 12th-greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly magazine, making him the highest-rated French filmmaker on the list.
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Although he became an American citizen, he was buried in France following a state funeral.
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