Jean Renoir

Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature—shot entirely on location in India—is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the Bengal river around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir’s subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its people, The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.

The Marquis de la Chesnaye and his wife host a weekend gala where a variety of complicated romantic and social entanglements between guests and servants lead to tragedy, all against the backdrop of a looming war.

A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.

A young French woman inherits her uncle's property in Algeria, and finds herself plotted against by her envious cousins, but also romanced by a handsome but previously irresponsible young man from a neighbouring farm.

Returning by train to the French port of Le Havre, Jacques Lantier, a tormented railwayman, meets by chance the impulsive stationmaster Roubard and Séverine, his wife.

Rival knights compete for the hand of a beautiful maiden in this period feature from Jean Renoir.

Nineteenth-century Paris comes vibrantly alive in Jean Renoir’s exhilarating tale of the opening of the world-renowned Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin plays the wily impresario Danglard, who makes the cancan all the rage while juggling the love of two beautiful women—an Egyptian belly-dancer and a naive working girl turned cancan star.

Count Moffat becomes infatuated with Nana, a presumptuous stage actress, vulgar, hypocritical and promiscuous, willing to do anything to succeed.

Sam Tucker, a cotton picker, in search of a better future for his family, decides to grow his own cotton crop. In the first year, the Tuckers battle disease, a flood, and a jealous neighbor. Can they make it as farmers?

An upper-class corporal is captured by the Germans during their 1940 invasion of France. Assisted and accompanied by characters as diverse as a morose dairy farmer, a waiter, a myopic intellectual, a working-class Parisian, and a German dental assistant, the corporal tries to escape from prison camps, sometimes making it a few yards, sometimes reaching the border.

The early days of the French Revolution, as seen through the eyes of the ordinary citizens in Marseille and the royal court, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

A hunter happens upon a fugitive and his daughter living in a Georgia swamp. He falls in love with the girl and persuades the fugitive to return to town.

A viceroy, a nobleman and a bullfighter court a comedy-troupe actress in 18th-century Peru.

Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well-to-do bookseller, Edouard Lestingois. The Lestingois family decides to take in the irrepressible bum, and he shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations. With Boudu Saved from Drowning, legendary director Jean Renoir takes advantage of a host of Parisian locations and the anarchic charms of his lead actor to create an effervescent satire of the bourgeoisie.

The family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The daughter falls in love with a man at the inn, where they spend the day.

Joris Ivens’s advocacy documentary for the Republican cause intercuts a besieged Madrid with a nearby village digging an irrigation canal, linking the war to bread, land, and survival. Produced by the writers’ collective Contemporary Historians, edited by Helen van Dongen, scored by Marc Blitzstein, and narrated in its U.S. version by Ernest Hemingway (after an initial Orson Welles track), it blends frontline reportage with persuasion against Franco’s forces and their German–Italian backers.

Somewhere in Europe, in a city occupied by the Nazis, a gentle school teacher finds himself torn between collaboration and resistance, cowardice and courage.

Celestine, the chamber-maid, has a new job in the country, at the Lanlaires. She has decided to use her beauty to seduce a wealthy man, but Mr. Lanlaire is not a right choice: the house is firmly controlled by Madame Lanlaire, helped by the strange valet Joseph. Then she tries the neighbour, former officer Mauger. This seems to work. But soon the son of the Lanlaires comes back. He is young, attractive and does not share his mother's antirepublican opinions. So Celestine's beauty attracts Captain Mauger, young Georges Lanlaire, and Joseph. Three men, from three different social classes, with three different conceptions of life. Will Celestine be able to convince Georges of her sincerity?

New Europe presidential candidate Etienne Alexis is a scientist promoting artificial insemination for social betterment and therapy to eliminate passion. To celebrate his engagement to a cousin, he hosts an aseptic picnic, where Mother Nature asserts herself. A shepherd's flute conjures a windstorm throwing Alexis together with the luscious Nénette, a farm lass who, although unimpressed with men, wants to have a baby.

The tumultuous relationship between a street singer and a prince.

A sailor suffering from post-traumatic stress becomes involved with a beautiful and enigmatic seductress married to a blind painter.

Set amid the military maneuvers and Quatorze Juillet carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir’s delirious romantic comedy Elena and her Men stars a radiant Ingrid Bergman as a beautiful, but impoverished, Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love. When Elena elicits the fascination of a famous general, she finds herself at the center of romantic machinations and political scheming, with the hearts of several men—as well as the future of France—in her hands.

Cashier Maurice Legrand is married to the wretched Adele. By chance, he meets Lucienne, 'Lulu', and makes her his mistress. He thinks he has finally found love, but Lulu is a streetwalker, still in love with her pimp.

Dr. Cordelier, living in a suburb of Paris, withdraws from society to pursue research into the functioning of the human brain. His lifelong friend, Maître Joly, becomes concerned when Cordelier draws up a will that bequeaths his entire estate to a stranger, Monsieur Opale; he cannot understand why Cordelier defends him, considering Opale attacks women and children. After a colleague is killed, Joly confronts Cordelier and discovers the truth behind his friend's behavior.

An anthology of plays and novels adapted into feature length TV movies, broadcast on BBC2 from September 1977 to April 1979.