The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Film Directors survey key directors whose work together constitutes what we refer to as the Hollywood and world cinema canons. Whether on Haneke or Hitchcock, Bigelow or Bergman, Capra or the Coen brothers, each volume, comprising 25 or more newly commissioned essays written by leading experts, explores a canonical, contemporary, and/or controversial auteur in a sophisticated, authoritative, and multidimensional capacity. Individual volumes interrogate any number of subjects the directors oeuvre; dominant themes; well-known, worthy, and underrated films; stars, collaborators, and key influences; reception, reputation, and above all the directors intellectual currency in the scholarly world.
This edition first published 2013
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to Jean Renoir / edited by Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau.
pages cm. (Wiley-Blackwell companions to film directors)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4443-3853-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Renoir, Jean, 18941979Criticism and
interpretation. I. Phillips, Alastair, 1963 editor of compilation. II. Vincendeau, Ginette, 1948 editor
of compilation.
PN1998.3.R46C66 2013
791.4309dc23
2012042929
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Photo of Jean Renoir by Sam Levin. Image courtesy of Cinmathque francaise.
Cover design by Nicki Averill Design and Illustration
Notes on Contributors
The EditorsAlastair Phillips is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of City of Darkness , City of Light: migr Filmmakers in Paris 19291939 (Amsterdam University Press, 2004) and Rififi (I. B. Tauris, 2009), and the co-author, with Jim Hillier, of 100 Film Noirs (BFI, 2009). He is also the co-editor, with Ginette Vincendeau, of Journeys of Desire: European Actors in Hollywood (BFI, 2006) and, with Julian Stringer, of Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts (Routledge, 2007).
Ginette Vincendeau is Professor of Film Studies at Kings College London. Among her books are Jean Gabin: anatomie dun mythe , with Claude Gauteur (Nathan, 1993; La Table ronde, 2006); Pp le Moko (BFI, 1998); Stars and Stardom in French Cinema (Continuum, 2000); Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris (BFI, 2003); La Haine (I. B. Tauris, 2005). She is co-editor, with Alastair Phillips, of Journeys of Desire: European Actors in Hollywood (BFI, 2006) and, with Peter Graham, of The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks (BFI, 2009). Her book on Brigitte Bardot was published by the BFI and Palgrave Macmillan in 2013.
Other Contributors
Dudley Andrew is the R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University. He began his career with three books on film theory, including a biography of Andr Bazin, whose thought he has continued to explore in the recent