Jean Renoir

Whether infiltrating philosophy, media studies, literature, culture, or politics, psychoanalytic theory leaves no academic stone unturned. Although considered passé by the sciences, and sophistic from the vantage of analytic philosophy, psychoanalysis continually provokes, prods, and presents a thorn in the side of many academic disciplines. Despite having been partially eclipsed by the legacies inherited from Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, psychoanalysis has gained traction in recent decades under the auspices of Slavoj Žižek, Joan Copjec, and Alain Badiou, and can be thought of as undergoing yet another renaissance today; although luminaries of the American philosophical tradition such as Noam Chomsky have long maintained that Jacques Lacan was, "an amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan," psychoanalytic theory -the Lacanian vein in particular -is perhaps more influential today than ever before. Todd McGowan's Psychoanalytic 1 Film Theory and "The Rules of the Game" offers a refreshing counterpoint to these and other hasty dismissals of psychoanalytic theory, providing a much-needed catalogue of the crucial concepts of psychoanalytic thought and their application to the study of film.

Production, biographical and transnational history of Jean Renoir's A Salute to France 1944, for the Office of War Information (OWI), including comparisons between the English-language and French-language version, intended as friendly propaganda or "information" for two audiences, drawing on archival materials

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Abstract:
This article explores filmmaking through a collective perspective of its creators. To trace this path, we introduce the conception of what we call filmic gesture as a way of outlining some relevant attributes of the nature of cinema. This route helps us develop the relations between the agents present in a film, where the conjugation of human and technical forces constitutes the cinematographic act. Our theoretical basis on the filmic gesture is constructed from Vilém Flusser’s reflections on the term gesture along with other writers who have dedicated their thoughts to the specificities of cinema – like Ricciotto Canudo, Béla Balázs and, more recently, Laura Mulvey. These authors, throughout their works, bet on the semantic richness of the word as an instrument of investigation into the complexities of the art of cinema. In order to examine the pertinence of our proposition, we lean on some important names in the history of cinema such as Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovski and Sven Nykvist, who devoted part of their careers to think over the particularities of their work with their partners. In doing so, we explore the collective character of creation, not as a mode of sharing authorship, but as a founding element of the cinematographic expression, in which the modulations between human and technical moves, between bodies and machines are the cornerstones of the filmic gesture.

Resumo:
Este artigo tem por objetivo pensar a realização cinematográfica através da perspectiva coletiva de seus criadores. Na construção desse caminho, partimos da elaboração do que chamamos gesto fílmico como forma de traçar algumas características da natureza do cinema que consideramos relevantes. Esse percurso nos auxilia a desenvolver com maior propriedade as diversas relações entre os agentes presentes em uma filmagem, em que a conjugação de forças humanas e técnicas constitui o próprio ato cinematográfico. As bases teóricas para a concepção do gesto fílmico partem das reflexões de Vilém Flusser sobre o gesto e seguem junto a outros autores que se dedicaram a pensar as especificidades do cinema-como Ricciotto Canudo, Béla Balázs e, mais recentemente, Laura Mulvey-, e que, ao longo de suas obras, apostaram na riqueza semântica do termo como um instrumento de investigação das complexidades intrínsecas à arte cinematográfica. Para examinar a pertinência de nossas colocações, contamos com relatos de nomes importantes da história do cinema como Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovski e Sven Nykvist, que dedicaram parte de suas carreiras à reflexão sobre as particularidades de seu trabalho em equipe. Desse modo, exploramos o caráter coletivo da criação não como um modo de compartilhamento de autoria, mas como elemento fundador da expressão cinematográfica, em que as modulações entre os movimentos humanos e técnicos, entre corpos e máquinas são os pilares do gesto fílmico.

Esta pesquisa investiga o cinema realizado por Alberto Cavalcanti, sua herança e a presença de traços conceituais e estéticos de sua obra na cinematografia italiana do pós-guerra. Existem duas características centrais que indicam similaridades entre o cinema realizado por Cavalcanti e o Neorrealismo: a priori, os aspectos sociais e poéticos intensos de seu trabalho, principalmente em sua fase francesa, em filmes como Rien que les heures (1926) e, mais tarde, mais explicitamente no cinema documental inglês em filmes como Coalface (1935). E a posteriori, o fato de Cavalcanti romper com as fronteiras entre documentário e ficção, desde de Rien que les heures e , sobretudo, na sua fase na General Post Office Film Unit. A partir dessas premissas, será possível afirmar a existência das raízes do cinema moderno, historicamente creditadas ao Neorrealismo Italiano.

El presente artículo recorre diferentes proyectos específicos elaborados para la televisión por cineastas trabajando en la órbita de alguna de sus fuentes de origen: teatro en Renoir, novela realista en Pialat, televisualidad en Lynch, y oralidad en Welles. Los específicos de la duración, la repetición o la serialidad, más otras coordenadas afines a la televisión como la simultaneidad, la intimidad y el alcance popular del medio, han convertido a la televisión en un territorio de infinitas posibilidades a explorar a partir de asumir una cierta pobreza de la imagen, esbozada ya en los trabajos televisivos de esos cuatro cineastas.

VEILED REPRESENTATIONS OF JEWS IN OCCUPIED FRANCE: CHILDREN OF PARADISE (1943)

by Yehuda Moraly

Numerous books and articles dealing with French cinema under Nazi occupation agree that it was not subject to ideological recruitment. "Children of Paradise" (Marcel Carne, Jacques Prevert, 1943), a cult film considered "the main oeuvre of French Cinema", even has a heroic image thanks to the clandestine collaboration of two Jewish artists: Alexandre Trauner and Joseph Kosma. This article analyzes the actual differences between the script written in 1942 and the film as shown in 1945. In this very modified later version (1944), one of the characters seems to be a camouflaged Jew. In addition to the unforgettable love story and the superb representation of the theater world of the 19th century, one can also read a portrayal of France in 1942 with its heroes and its traitors who are destined to be killed by the film's conclusion. In actuality, perhaps too much attention has been given to the "clandestine collaboration" of these two famous Jewish artists, an importance which tended to overshadow the significance of an artistic work which in its original form could have been interpreted quite differently.

In addition to his cinematographic activities, Jean Renoir was a very prolific and versatile writer, having authored several novels and plays, as well as many articles and autobiographical texts. To this collection of writings one can add his correspondence, which developed during Renoir's exile in the United States during World War II.  This correspondence is readily used as a documentary resource that helps to shed light on the life and career of the filmmaker, but seldom has it been considered in its own right.  It is essential to consider a letter not only as a document but as a discourse, a text.  If on the one hand Renoir's letters reveal information about the making of certain films, the rhetoric at work could help reinterpret the history of cinematographic genesis.
What is at stake in this correspondence turns out to be less genetic than autobiographical. Renoir uses letters to relate the identity upheaval born out of a situation of exile and to demonstrate his artistic identity.  In doing so he shatters the myth of the Author, created in the fifties and to which he had himself publicly contributed.  On an epistolary level, Renoir sees himself as an honest man, in the way it was understood in the classical period.  He uses letters as a way to prove his sociability through the mastery of the art of pleasing. His desire to please incites him to experiment with stances likely to generate his correspondent's assent.  Before using letters as a biographical resource, the reader must put back into perspective this rhetoric of the honest man according to Renoir.