Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Accessible and original analysis of all Jean Renoir's sound films, including those he made in Hollywood - this is the first major study to appear for a number of years and brings new light on some of the director's most celebrated films.. Illuminating account of critical debates concerning Renoir, and focusing on hitherto neglected areas such as gender, nation and ethnicity the book asks us to rethink our understanding of Renoir's political commitment.. Traces his output from the silent period to the age of television, tying his work into a fast-shifting, socio-historical context.. Detailed analyses of his sound films map his evolving style while individual chapters cover Renoir's career and writings, critical debates, the silent and early sound films, the Popular Front period, Renoir amèricain and the later films.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• An Uneven Career
• Renoir and the Critics
• The Early Films
• The Popular Front Years
• Renoir Americain
• Late Renoir
• Conclusion
• Filmography

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

O'Shaughnessy's close readings of Renoir's films are a model for auteurism: he resists the temptation to impose a formula and instead defines and respects the director's developments and contradictions and confronts the troubling inconsistencies in individual works (e.g., La grand illusion, 1937). The author discusses the films in four periods--the silent films, which show conventional content but experimental techniques; adaptations of the early 1930s, which display his developing style and his movement toward acerbic social comment; his Popular Front period, which failed and led to his explorations of American mythology; and his antipolitical (French) hedonist humanism. O'Shaughnessy describes and analyzes all the films in detail and offers an intelligent summary of the major critical writings on Renoir and his individual films, from both leftist and auteurist poles. He frequently cites Renoir's own writing but wisely contextualizes it to avoid Renoir's manipulation. The argument is always well grounded in the films, clear, and helpfully summarized. This is a first-rate introduction to one of the cinema's masters. Though it lacks the dense sweep of the two longer studies in English--Christopher Faulkner's The Social Cinema of Jean Renoir (CH, Sep'86) and Alexander Sesonske's Jean Renoir: The French Films, 1924-39 (CH, Nov'80), this volume is now the best overall introduction to the ever-intriguing Renoir. M. Yacowar; University of Calgary