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Toni

Jean Renoir

29.06 UGC De BrouckĂšre 18:00 TICKETS
Fiction . '81 . France . 1935 . FR / ST : EN

In the 1920s, the Provence is a magnet for immigrants seeking work in the quarries or in the agriculture. Many mingle with locals and settle down permanently – like Toni, an Italian who has moved in with Marie, a Frenchwoman. Even a well-ordered existence is not immune from boredom, friendship, love, or enmity, and Toni gets entangled in a web of increasingly passionate relationships. For there is his best pal Fernand, but also Albert, his overbearing foreman; there is Sebastian, a steady Spanish peasant, but also Gabi, his young rogue relative; there is Marie, but there is also Josefa.

đŸŽžïž Genre : Neoralism

🌿1935 : Beste foreign film – New York Film Critics Circle Awards

Flag: Italy on Twitter Twemoji 15.0 Curated by the Cineteca di Bologna

STARRING

Andrex

CĂ©lia Montalvan

Max Dalban

Charles Blavette

Edouard Delmont

Jenny HĂ©lia

Michel Kovachevitch

WRITER

Jean Renoir

DIRECTOR

Jean Renoir

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Claude Renoir

SOUND

René Sarazin

Bardisbanian

FILM EDITING

Suzanne De Troeye

Marguerite Houllé-Renoir

MUSIC

Paul Bozzi

Jean Renoir

jean-renoir

Jean Renoir is a French film director and son of the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. His films, in both silent and later eras, were noted for their realism and strong narrative and include such classics as Grand Illusion (1937), The Rules of the Game (1939), and The River (1951).

The first film Renoir directed was La Fille de l’eau (released 1924; Whirlpool of Fate), which starred his wife. All of his early films were produced in a makeshift way, with technical clumsiness, a lack of means, and a certain amateurishness. Nevertheless, the instinctive genius of the filmmaker found expression in them. These early films, which reveal a strong pictorial influence, have taken on with time a particular charm. In the late 1920s he found his inspiration in the writings of Émile Zola, Hans Christian Andersen, and others but made them into personal films in the style of the French avant-garde of the period.

These films had no commercial success, and Renoir and his backers were almost ruined. The advent of sound in motion pictures brought new difficulties, but Renoir passed the test with On purge bĂ©bé (1931; Baby’s Laxative) and proved himself with La Chienne (1931; “The Bitch”), a fierce and bitter film adapted from a comic novel by Georges de la FouchardiĂšre.

During the 1930s Jean Renoir produced many of his most notable works, but their freedom of composition was confusing to critics of the period, and the films achieved only middling success. These films include La Nuit du carrefour (1932; Night at the Crossroads), based on a novel by Georges Simenon; Boudu sauvĂ© des eaux (1932; Boudu Saved from Drowning); Madame Bovary (1934), based on Gustave Flaubert’s classic novel; and Le Crime de M. Lange (1936; The Crime of Monsieur Lange), which, in contrast to the rather stilted manner of the first years of sound films, foretells a reconquest of the true moving-picture style.

In 1936, in sympathy with the social movements of the French Popular Front, Renoir codirected the communist propaganda film La Vie est Ă  nous (The People of France). The same year, he recaptured the flavour of his early works with a short film, Une Partie de campagne (released 1946; A Day in the Country), which he finished with great difficulty. A masterpiece of impressionist cinema, this film presents all the poetry and all the charm of the pictorial sense that is, far more than his technique, the basis of his art as a filmmaker. The late 1930s saw such major works as La Grande Illusion (1937; Grand Illusion), a moving story of World War I prisoners of war; La BĂȘte humaine (1938; The Human Beast, or Judas Was a Woman), an admirable free interpretation of Zola; and especially La RĂšgle du jeu (1939; The Rules of the Game), his masterpiece. Cut and fragmented by the distributors, this classic film was also regarded as a failure until it was shown in 1965 in its original form, which revealed its astonishing beauty.

During World War II, when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, Renoir, like many of his friends, went to Hollywood and continued his career there. His American period includes films of varying merit, which mark a departure from his previous style: Swamp Water (1941), The Southerner (1945), Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and The Woman on the Beach (1947). He made The River (1951), his first colour film, in India.

Now in full command of a mature style that reflected the qualities of the man himself—sensitivity, fervour, and humanity—he returned to Europe by way of Italy, where he made Le Carrosse d’or (released 1952; The Golden Coach). A sumptuous work, combining the talents of both a painter and a dramatist, this film shows Renoir’s love of actors and their profession. He occasionally played roles in his own or other directors’ films, and he allowed his actors a great deal of initiative. Subsequently, he made French Cancan (1955), a fabulous evocation of the Montmartre of the 19th century, and ElĂ©na et les hommes (1956; Paris Does Strange Things), a period fantasy swept along in a prodigious movement. His last works, from the 1960s, do not achieve the same beauty, nor does the work he produced for television.

FILMOGRAPHY

1932: Boudu sauvé des eaux (feature)

1936: La vie est Ă  nous (feature)

1937: La Grande illusion (feature)

1939: La RĂšgle du jeu (feature)

1946: Partie de campagne (short)

1954: French Cancan (feature)

1959: Le DĂ©jeuner sur l’herbe (feature)

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