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Film Description
A collection of six films by French auteur Jean Renoir: Features La Grande Illusion (1937), La Marseillaise (1938), La Bete Humaine (1938), Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (1959), Le Dejeuner sur L'Herbe (1959) and Le Caporal Epingle (1962).
La Grande Illusion (1937), Renoir's most famous film, noted for its humanistic, anti-war message, is a poignant meditation on class, the nature of war and the death of the old European order.
La Bete Humaine (1938), starring Jean Gabin and Simone Simon, was adapted from Emile Zola's novel of murderous passion, and is a powerful tale of intrigue and claustrophobic guilt, in which train driver Lantier becomes involved with a sensuous woman, for whom he lies to protect her from implication in a murder.
La Marseillaise (1938), is a carefully woven tapestry of the French Revolution, depicting the turbulent events of July 15th 1789 to August 10th 1792 – from the storming of the Bastille by an undisciplined rabble to the defeat of the mighty Prussian infantry by a unified nation. The film traces the adventures of Arnaud and Bornier, two members of the peoples’ army whose fight for the principles of Liberte, Egalite and Fraternity represents that of the nation itself.
Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (1959), is Renoir’s take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde story, switching the action to 1950s France. Jean-Louis Barrault stars as Dr Cordelier, whose strange experiments on research patients have resulted in a vicious brute named Opale, seemingly responsible for a wave of terror sweeping the Paris suburbs.
Le Dejeuner sur L'Herbe (1959), stars Paul Meurisse as a scientist involved in a radical program pioneering the use of artificial insemination. Coming from a coldly formal intellectual upbringing, Alexis’s invention aims to remove passion from reproduction as he perceives it to be unnecessary complication; and in doing so he will bring further wealth to his family via their chemical-making corporations. Inspired by his father’s paintings, the film is visually stunning while also cultivating a playful air of satire and romance.
In Le Caporal Epingle (1962), Renoir revisits the prison camp setting he first exploited in La Grande Illusion almost 30 years before, directing Jean-Pierre Cassel as an aristocratic French Corporal who is captured by the Germans shortly after their invasion of France in 1940. Helped by a variety of different characters – both French and German, the Corporal repeatedly escapes and is recaptured, sometimes making it barely a mile, sometimes all the way to the French border.
