French Cancan

An impressario (Jean Gabin) engages in romantic entanglements with his main drawing act (Maria Felix), a new discovery (Francois Arnoul) and two of her lovers while reintroducing the can-can, an outdated dance number, and opening what would come to be known as the Moulin Rouge. One of Jean Renoir's post American exile works, French Cancan is dominated by cheesy French humor and underdrawn characters, though Gabin's performance is winning and the dance numbers, the finale in particular, are spectacular.

*** out of ****

The River

The eldest daughter of a British India based factory owner vies with an American for the affections of a troubled soldier while third girl struggles with her mixed ethnicity. Jean Renoir's The River is an uncomplicated coming of age tale set amid the brimming life on the Ganges, beautiful told with painterly Technicolor and graceful, poignant filmmaking.

*** 1/2 out of ****

The Rules of the Game

A French aviator despairs that his true love was not present on the runway to receive him for his latest Trans Atlantic flight record. Together, along with his garrulous best friend, they attend a luxuriant weekend gathering at the girl's husband's country estate where carefree attitudes and hostilities between members of the upstairs and down lead to a tragic case of mistaken identity. Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game is a purposeful satire and a sublime, absolutely dazzing juggling act. Brilliantly written, impossibly staged, and memorably cast (with a good role thrown in for the director himself, the film is a timely indictment of the French class system on the eve of world war.

**** out of ****

La Grande Illusion

Two French airmen, one a nobleman (Pierre Fresnay), the other from working class roots (Jean Gabin), are shot down by a mannerly officer (Erich von Stroheim) who lives and dies by the code of war and sees that his aristocratic counterpart is treated with dignity. During their imprisonment, the two friends make several escape attempts before being transferred to a mountainous gulag proudly billed as inescapable (and also where the German officer is now installed as warden) where they naturally plan their illustrious exit. Jean Renoir's roundly trumpeted tour de force functions soaringly on two fronts, first as an intricate, exciting prison escape adventure movie (every subsequent film of its kind [ie, The Great Escape, The Shawshank Redemption, etc.] surely has its roots here) and simultaneously as a critique of classicism and the idea of the nobility of war. Gabin and Fresnay are both superb in winning the audience over and von Stroheim, the purportedly tyrannical director who spent his previous American career embroiled in studio battles before his exile, is absolutely flawless as the gallant German officer.

Partie de Campagne

A Parisian shop owner takes his wife, daughter, and apprentice (who is betrothed to his daughter) for an idyllic countryside respite where two locals have devices on the women and scheme to get them away from their men. "Partie de Campagne" is a light, well-made short, which a wonderfully realized ending, from master director Jean Renoir, who adapted a short story by Guy de Maupassant, a contemporary of his celebrated, impressionistic painter father.