Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion Experience

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s son, Jean, became one of the most important French directors of the 20th century. His now classic film La Grande Illusion follows two French soldiers during the First World War, Captain de Boeldieu and Lieutenant Maréchal, who are captured and imprisoned in a German P.O.W. camp and attempt to escape. The making of La Grande Illusion was “marked by some fortunate circumstances,” explains Nick Macdonald, in his book In Search of La Grande Illusion: A Critical Appreciation of Jean Renoir’s Elusive Masterpiece. One early circumstance that led to the creation of the film stemmed from Renoir’s own experience in the war:

Mid–World War I: (left to right) Georges Rivière, Paul Cézanne, Jr., Jean Renoir; Jean-Pierre and Aline Cézanne in front (ca. 1916) (UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library, Department of Special Collections, Jean Renoir Collection).

Mid–World War I: (left to right) Georges Rivière, Paul Cézanne, Jr., Jean Renoir; Jean-Pierre and Aline Cézanne in front (ca. 1916) (UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library, Department of Special Collections, Jean Renoir Collection).

“The series of lucky breaks and chance encounters that helped lead to the movie as we know it began twenty years earlier, during World War I. Renoir had enlisted and, in 1916, was assigned to air reconnaissance, like Maréchal. During one mission, his Caudron, an old-style airplane, was attacked by a German Fokker. A French fighter plane shot down the attacking Fokker and saved him; his rescuer turned out to be Captain Armand Pinsard, an acclaimed ace in the French air force.

A champagne dinner at their canteen celebrated the occasion and they became friends. During their time together, Pinsard talked about horses he had trained. They were separated when Renoir’s squadron transferred to another area.

Years later, in 1934, while Renoir was filming Toni in the south of France, planes from a nearby airfield flew overhead, disrupting his sound recording. He went to the base and found that the commanding officer was Pinsard. The planes were rerouted and the two veterans renewed their friendship, dining together often, with Pinsard recounting his wartime adventures, many of which had already been publicized in a 1917 magazine article.

Pinsard had been shot down a number of times and once succeeded in tunneling through a thick prison wall to escape captivity. Renoir made an outline that covered his exploits, “Les Évasions du Colonel Pinsard” (“The Escapes of Colonel Pinsard”), and thought it might be the basis for a good film some day.”

Watch La Grande Illusion at the Phillips on December 14.

Jean Renoir’s A Day in the Country

Stills from A Day in the Country

Jean Renoir (1894-1979), the second son of Pierre-Auguste and Aline Charigot, was an important French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. Jean’s film A Day in the Country (1936) is based on a novel by Guy de Maupassant and situated on the River Loing, south of Paris, in 1880, and echoes subjects in his father’s paintings, such as The Swing (1876, Musée d’Orsay) and many scenes of riverside diversion. Maupassant knew Pierre-Auguste and also frequented the Maison Fournaise. In the film, the Dufour family—out from the city for a day on the river—is depicted as charmed but unprepared for the wild freedoms of the countryside. Jean includes himself as the innkeeper. Pierre Lestringuez, the son of Pierre-Auguste’s close friend, plays a priest.

Jean Renoir was critically wounded in World War I and spent valuable time with his aged father after his mother died in 1915. Their conversations helped him write Renoir, My Father, first published in French in 1958. The book remains a valuable source about the life of the artist from his son’s point of view.

Watch A Day in the Country in the Renoir and Friends exhibition galleries and Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937) on December 14.

Goodbye Illuminated Archives; Welcome Participant

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Installation view of Participant, Vesna Pavlović’s exhibition at G Fine Art Gallery. Photo: Vesela Sretenović

As Illuminated Archive, an Intersections project by Vesna Pavlović is approaching its end (closing Sunday, September 28), a new project by the Serbian-born, Nashville-based artist just opened on Saturday, September 13, at G Fine Art in its new 14th Street location.

In this exhibition, the artist continues to explore the archive of images, this time drawn from the Museum of Yugoslav History in Belgrade, Serbia. This brings into play not only the photographic records of the socialist era under the President Josip Broz Tito, she remembers as Participant, but also her own memories of a time that no longer exists.

Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Vesela Sretenović

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Installation view of Participant, Vesna Pavlović’s exhibition at G Fine Art Gallery.