Letters

by Jean Renoir, David Thompson, Lorraine LoBianco

Jean Renoir (1894-1979) was hailed as the greatest of film directors by no less than Orson Welles and Charles Chaplin. The son of the celebrated impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he made such classics of French cinema as Boudu Saved From Drowning, La Grande Illusion and La Regle du Jeu - voted by critics in Sight and Sound as one of the ten best films of all time.
The letters in this volume, many published here for the first time, span Renoir's entire life, revealing a man of unparalleled humanity and artistic commitment. They cast new light on his creative struggles, both in France and Hollywood, and provide a record of his friendships with such people as the writers Georges Simenon, Dudley Nichols and Clifford Odets, the actresses Ingrid Bergman and Leslie Caron and the directors Erich von Stroheim and Francois Truffaut.

Hardcover

First published December 1, 1994

About the author

Jean Renoir was a film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. He was the second son of Aline Charigot and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He was also the brother of Pierre Renoir, a noted French stage and film actor; the uncle of Claude Renoir, a cinematographer; and the father of Alain Renoir, late professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. As an author, he wrote the definitive biography of his father, Renoir, My Father (1962).