Jean Renoir, son of the impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, is counted by film scholars as among cinema’s greatest directors. On Tuesday evening, December 3, his fine American feature, “The Southerner” will be shown at the Easton Public Library at 7 p.m.
By the late 1930s, Jean Renoir had established his reputation in France with a score of artful films, including an anti-war classic “La Grande Illusion.” This film so threatened Hitler that when the Nazis marched into Paris in 1940, he ordered the destruction of every print. Renoir made a hasty exit to Hollywood, with a contract to direct movies at 20th Century Fox.
Used to having total control of his productions, Jean Renoir found working within the American studio system a difficult adjustment. It came down to the question of who was in charge. During the eight years he lived in the United States, Renoir directed five features. There was only one he was able to make away from the studio with the freedom of spontaneity that was an integral part of his French method.
That film was “The Southerner,” starring Zachary Scott and Betty Fields. Taking us through a year in the life of a poor sharecropper and his family, perhaps the most important star of the film is nature: the fields, the sky, the river, and a wily old catfish.
Filled with humor and pathos, “The Southerner” has the feel of a reconstructed documentary. Renoir spoke of external reality as an expression and symbol of an interior truth. And that “truth” in “The Southerner” is Renoir’s vision of the core of what the new world, what America, is all about.
Join us on Tuesday, Dec. 3 in the community room of the Easton Public Library for a discussion of Jean Renoir, and a screening of his most successful American film: “The Southerner.”
See for yourself how the son of a famous painter was himself able to create an impressionistic picture of America on celluloid.
