PETIT THEATRE DE JEAN RENOIR, LE / THE LITTLE THEATRE OF JEAN RENOIR

France, 1970, 100 minutes, Colour.
Jeanne Moreau, Jean Carmet, Francoise Arnoul.
Directed by Jean Renoir.

Jean Renoir came from the famous family of artists including Pierre and Auguste. He came to prominence in French film-making in the 1920s, achieving a number of film masterpieces in the 1930s including La Marseillaise, La Grande Illusion, The Rules of the Game. La Grande Illusion was nominated for an Oscar for best film.

During the war he was living in the United States and made a number of films there, including Swamp Water, The Southerner, This Land is Mine. He later took American citizenship. After the war, he returned to France and made quite a number of films in France including French Cancan.

This film has four stories: The Last Christmas Dinner, a relationship between an old man and an old woman who are homeless. The second story is The Electric Floor Polisher, like an opera, with a woman who is obsessed with polishing her rooms. The third part is a musical feature with Jeanne Moreau singing When Love Dies. The fourth story is called The Virtue of Tolerance, an old man, his younger wife, and coming to terms with her relationship with a man of her own age.

1. Jean Renoir, his reputation, visual style, issues? The end of his career?

2. A film for television? The little theatre, small stories, the stage, the curtain? The sets, becoming larger? The audience? The curtain calls?

3. Renoir, his introduction, his personal style, establishing the settings?

4. The different episodes, their moods, interrelationship?

5. The Last Christmas Dinner: Hans Christian Andersen, fairy tales, the points to be made? An update? The rich set and their worries, money, talking about money and their concerns? The mediocrity of their lives? The beggar and money? The embarrassment, the payoff with gifts? People in the street? The beggar and the woman? Imagination, elegance (and snobbery), love, the Christmas setting, death – and the other beggars?

6. The Electric Floor Polisher: the opera, the machine? The ironic introduction concerning the songs, chorus and songs and comments? The lovers and the walk? The introduction to the husband and wife? The wife rushing to polish the floors? Not listening to her husband, wanting the mechanic, the neighbour? Death? The husband, his hurry, attitude towards his job, his wife? The bath and death? The mourning period? The suitor, marrying, the woman and her furtive use of her machine? Death again? The comic confrontation and the photo? A moral story about the bourgeoisie?

7. When Love Dies: Jeanne Moreau, her status on the French screen, international? Her song, evoking nostalgia, the death of love?

8. The Virtue of Tolerance: The Gallic touch, the hero and his wife? Jolly? The jealousy, love, age and happiness? (The boy and the courtesan?) The wife, languid? The vet, being part of the place? The adultery? Guilt, reaction, grief? Acceptance? Saving face? The husband and the wife, coming to terms with the situation, together? The game, laugh, jolliness again? The morals and the point?

9. The cumulative effect of one hundred minutes and these four stories?