A Companion to Jean Renoir

Notes on Contributors viii
 
Acknowledgments 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

Alastair Phillips is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of Rififi (2009), and City of Darkness, City of Light: Émigré Filmmakers in Paris 1929-1939 (2004). He is co-author of 100 Film Noirs (2009) and co-editor, with Ginette Vincendeau, of Journeys of Desire: European Actors in Hollywood (2006) as well as, with Julian Stringer, of Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts (2007).
 
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 Wave: Critical Landmarks (2009).

"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

"Phillips and Vincendeau's volume is intelligently organized, extremely comprehensive, and generously illustrated with images from many of the films. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionanls." ( Choice , 1 January 2014)