As I wrote in Senses of Cinema 55, “Jean Renoir is arguably the greatest artist that the cinema has ever known, simply because he was able to work effectively in virtually all genres without sacrificing his individuality or bowing to public or commercial conventions. Although he was the son of the famed Impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, his visual sensibility was entirely his own, and the technical facility that marks his films is the result of long and assiduous study.”
Jean Renoir’s gorgeous, if truncated film Partie de campagne (shot in 1936, but not completed, in featurette form, until 1946), once again offers proof that Renoir remains the supreme humanist of the cinema, with a deep understanding of the follies of human nature, coupled with a great sense of sympathy for his protagonists. Renoir remains someone I come back to again and again; he restores my faith in the redemptive power of cinema, something that’s often hard to imagine these days.
You can read the full essay here.
Tags: Jean Renoir, Partie de campagne
