Jean Renoir in America, Part 1

J'approve le Ray-de-Bleu, mes petites mignons cineastes!

As the basic details go, esteemed French director Jean Renoir hopped over to Italy to make the film Tosca when his latest, Rules of the Game (1939) was met with distate by critics and the establishment. Then Mussolini sided with Hitler, and Renoir decided to abandon his stake in Tosca (a film eventually completed by  Carl Koch, and released in 1941) and return to France, only to flee to American when the Nazis invaded his homeland.

Renoir would eventually return to more personal fare in 1951 (some filmed in English, most in French), and his American films (1941-1947) are more interesting for the way in which Renoir's own themes and interests transcended straight Hollywood genres, insofar as the studios under which he was contracted tried to render his films more palatable to average audiences.

Renoir purists may regard his U.S. period as less than stellar, but I think time's been rather kind to most of his works - each somewhat compromised, but still quite distinct from the generic southern dramas, anti-Nazi thrillers, and melodramas in production during that period.