French film director and noted family, the son of the artist Pierre Auguste Renoir. His films which include Zola’s “Nana,” 1926, “La Grande Illusion,” 1937, “The Rules of The Game” 1939 and “Diary of a Chambermaid,” 1946 are considered masterpieces of cinema. He is the author of several books including “Renoir, My Father,” 1962, “The Notebooks of Captain Georges,” 1966 and “My Life in Film,” 1976.
After directing a total of 36 films, he received a special Academy Award in 1975. Known for poetic realism, he wrote the script for “Le Grande Illusion,” 1973, considered one of the world’s best antiwar dramas. Renoir’s work markedly influenced the New Wave of film making that emerged in the late ’50s. His work also includes “Madame Bovary,” 1934, and “the River,” 1950.
Renoir spent an idyllic childhood among the rural landscapes his father loved to paint. When his mother died during his youth, his cousin Gabrielle, 15 years his senior, became a model surrogate parent to him and his two brothers, one of whom grew up to be actor Pierre Renoir. At the time of Gabrielle’s death in 1959, she was Renoir’s next door neighbor.
After serving in WW I, where he was awarded the Croix de Guerre, Renoir studied ceramics. He then began writing screenplays and soon turned to filmmaking. Renoir left France for Lisbon in 1940 after the German invasion and came to America in February 1941 at the invitation of documentarian Robert Flaherty, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen and an exile to Hollywood. Desperate to accommodate his artistic vision to the demands of the studio system, he persisted against great odds and achieved his goal in his film about the struggles of farm life ,”The Southerner” in 1945.
Returning to Paris after the War, Renoir resumed his career and became the icon of the New Wave in French cinema despite his previous reputation at being a poor draw at the box office. “The further things go, the more we have two kinds of cinema. We have the one that makes a lot of money, and that, shall we say, stupefies the public with the most ordinary pap. Then there are the people who try to do something that’s a little better.”
Renoir’s early marriage to Catherine Hessling ended in divorce and he a made second marriage to Brazilian Dido Freire in 1941. He died of Parkinson’s Disease and a heart attack on 2/12/1979 in Beverly Hills, CA.
Link to Wikipedia biography