Renoir père et fils
When I think that I might have been born into a family of intellectuals! It would have taken me years to get rid of all their ideas and see things as they are.
—Jean Renoir, in Renoir, My Father, his biography of his father the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Renoir père’s early work was recently the subject of an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel called “Renoir. Between Bohemia and the Bourgeoisie: The Early Years” (reviewed here). And many of Renoir fils’s films are being shown at the Film Forum in New York as part of their “The French Old Wave” retrospective, including Toni, A Day in the Country (based on a Mauspassant short story), Boudu Saved From Drowning, The Rules of the Game, and Grand Illusion.
