Man With A Movie List

Director: Jean Renoir Year: 1939 Run-time: 1 hr 50 min - This is Renoir's grand opus, his most famous film, at least after it came back into favor after the war (it was a notorious flop upon release).  If I was forced to choose, I might call it my favorite film of the 1930's.  But it's not very representative of that era, not fitting neatly into any particular movement.  Renoir was as much a pioneer of poetic realism as Carne, but with this one he consciously rejected the style and tried to make something that was, to paraphrase the man himself, more Voltaire than Flaubert. But in confronting class hierarchy directly, he created something that felt more honest than anything he had made before, while being at the same time breathtaking and often bitingly funny. - Class conflict was a preoccupation of Renoir's previous films going back at least as far as Boudu Saved From Drowning , but many other of Renoir's themes can be found here as well, including the relati...

Director: Jean Renoir Year: 1938 Run-time: 1 hr 40 min - This isn't an easy film to love in 2020, since its protagonist murders women uncontrollably yet is meant to elicit a strange kind of sympathy, and the female lead is pegged as manipulative, coercing her lovers to murder.  Critics of the time period agreed that there is something deeply disturbing about this film based on an Emile Zola film.  Nevertheless, the performance of Jean Gabin and Simone Simon are fascinating to watch, and if the film took greater liberties with its source material, it might have been one of Renoir's finest.  As it is, it is a forerunner to some of the worst trends of film noir, as well as some of the best, and I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. - This is Jean Gabin's fourth film on the list in two years, a feat I'm not sure will be repeated. I might call Gabin the best actor of the 1930's.  It's fascinating to compare him to a male lead like Cary Grant.  Whereas...

Director: Jean Renoir Year: 1937 Run-time: 1 hr 54 min - I've always been a little skeptical of Renoir's reputation, despite the generally high quality of his films, but this is the first one where I think I understand. In the late 1930's, Renoir was likely the only director that could pull a feat like this off.  He puts so many coherent and moving messages into a film that's still fun and accessible.  To put it succintly, La Grande Illusion  is  The Great Escape , with three times the heart and no less excitement. - I could say much more, but for a list watcher the excitement here is seeing three big names combine.  The excellent Jean Gabin from the last film isn't really the star performer here, since he gets to share the screen with Pierre Fresnay from the Marseille trilogy, and, strangely, Erich von Stroheim, the director of Foolish Wives , who just steals the show whenever he appears.  Dang, this film is really good.

Director: Jean Renoir Year: 1936 Run-time: 40 min - You can tell that French film is thriving in 1936 by the fact that a film by Renoir is the worst of the last three on the list.  (Renoir has two 1936 films on the list - and other classics from this year that didn't make the cut.)  That's only really due to its brevity, and the fact that it wasn't properly finished due to extenuating circumstances.  What exists is still pretty excellent - putting the elegant but slight story aside, it's Renoir's ode to the natural world, which never quite came through before due to the bluntness of 1930's cinematography.  In fact, it's the only Renoir film I've seen in which he channels something of his father's eye for natural beauty (a fact he alludes to himself in a later commentary he gave on the film).

Director: Jean Renoir Year: 1935 Run-time: 1 hr 30 min - This is a film about immigrants in the south of France, but in my opinion at least it doesn't have too much to say about the immigrant experience, except as it relates to class.  In some sense I suppose it matters that the woman leaves Toni in order to be with an abusive native-born man matters, but it's hard for me to say just how the story would be different if Toni himself was French.  But it is a top-class story about relationships, with a heavy dose of melodrama but always with its eye on practicalities.  If the acting was a bit better, it would rank among Renoir's top films, but as such it's still an excellent watch.

Director: Jean Renoir Year: 1932 Run-time: 1 hr 24 min Source: Criterion Channel Streaming Notable For : This is the first film on the list from the great French director Jean Renoir, son of the impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.  Boudu  is adapted from a play - the titular tramp is a character is a tramp who, after being saved by a bourgeois bookseller, then proceeds to take advantage of his benefactor's kindness by upending all social mores and lustily pursuing his wife and maid (who he was having an affair with).  Verdict:  As a tramp character, Boudu is inevitably compared to Chaplin's iconic character.  However, unlike the purity and innocence that made Chaplin's Tramp so endearing, Boudu as portrayed by Michel Simon is more like Heath Ledger's Joker, taking delight at watching other people squirm at him.  And there are multiple cringeworthy moments, both comically cringeworthy as he gets shoe grease all over the wife's bedroom, and pr...