Amazon.com Review
So many pyramids of acclaim have been built around Jean Renoir, director of Grand Illusion, The Rules of the Game, and The River, that the man and his films often seem removed and sterile. But Renoir was a real entertainer as well as a major filmmaker; poignancy and comedy were of equal importance to him. Throwing off the shackles of austerity, Ronald Bergen has written an intimate biography of the filmmaker. He recounts the details of Renoir's event-filled life in an easy, fluid style that makes this book easy to devour and hard to put down.
From Publishers Weekly
Jean Renoir (1894-1979), a ceramicist turned filmmaker, married Catherine Hessling--the vivacious model who had cared for his ailing father, Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir--and made her the star of his films. In this impressive critical biography, written with the cooperation of the director's son Alain, Catherine is portrayed as an unloving, vengeful, sexually cold mate who hated being a mother. This revealing portrait traces Renoir's support of the French Communist Party, his escape from Nazi-occupied France in 1940 with Dido Freire, who became his second wife, his trying years in Hollywood, where he was treated as a novice or a spoiled brat, and his return to France and his cultural roots. Bergan, coauthor of Faber Companion to Foreign Films , deftly illuminates Renoir's fluent, compassionate, poetic naturalism. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
