Jean Renoir was admired by his followers and contemporaries far the relaxed feel of his films. He himself loved the improvisatory quality of the Commedia dell'Arte, which he saw as a struggle between 'the tendency toward exterior realism and that toward interior realism', and wrote that what he considered to be 'the ultimate in cinema as in theatre' was 'a style and dialogue that sometimes borders on the burlesque'. Much is left to chance, or a belief in happy coincidence: he wrote the script for La Règle du jeu as it was being filmed, bad weather turned Une Partie de campagne from a feature-length into a 40-minute film, and when a whole reel from La Nuit du carrefour was lost he screened it anyway. Yet none of these is 'unfinished'.

LRB 9 February 1995 | PDF Download