French postcard in the Portrait de Stars by L'Aventure Carto, 2003, no. 12. photo: Marcel Thomas / Collection Gérard Gagnepain.

French actress Bernadette Lafont (1938-2013) appeared in several classics of the Nouvelle Vague. Original and full of contradictions, she was both sexy and rather plain, brassy and quite serious, a mixture of intellect, sensuality and humour.

Bernadette Paule Anne Lafont was born in Nîmes in the South of France in 1938. She was the daughter of a pharmacist and his wife. As a teenager, she started her career as a dancer. She entered the Opéra de Nîmes where she fell in love with her future husband, the handsome actor Gérard Blain. In Paris, she met the young critic and aspiring film director François Truffaut, who offered her a role in his second short film, shot in Nîmes. So she made her screen debut in Les Mistons/The Mischief Makers (Francois Truffaut, 1957) opposite Gérard Blain. It was a comedy about five kids, who spy on two lovers during a hot summer day. It turned out to be that she was in the right place at the right time to catch the Nouvelle Vague movement, the new wave of filmmakers that would revolutionize the cinema. She starred particularly in films by Truffaut and by Claude Chabrol. Her first feature and still one of her best-known films is Le Beau Serge/Bitter Reunion (Claude Chabrol, 1958) with Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy. (She had married Blain the year before but they would divorce a year later.) Many Nouvelle Vague films followed. With Chabrol she also made À double tour/Leda (Claude Chabrol, 1959) starring Madeleine Robinson, Les bonnes femmes/The Good Time Girls (Claude Chabrol, 1960) with Stéphane Audran, and Les godelureaux/Wise Guys (Claude Chabrol, 1961). She appeared in Truffaut’s comedy Tire-au-flanc 62/The Army Game (Claude de Givray, François Truffaut, 1960), and was the feisty heroine of Truffaut’s Une belle fille comme moi/A Gorgeous Bird Like Me (François Truffaut, 1972). For Louis Malle, she did a supporting part in his comedy Le voleur/The Thief of Paris (Louis Malle, 1967) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, and for Jacques Rivette, she joined the cast of Out 1, noli me tangere/Out 1 (Jacques Rivette, Suzanne Schiffman, 1971) and Out 1: Spectre (Jacques Rivette, 1974). Finally, she played the role of Marie, one-third of the trio of lovers in La Maman et la Putain/The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973), considered by some critics as the last film of the Nouvelle Vague.

A well-known film with Bernadette Lafont is La Fiancée du Pirate/A Very Curious Girl (Nelly Kaplan, 1969). The success of this film about violence against women renewed her career after a difficult period. She was seen in Les stances à Sophie/Sophie’s Ways (Moshé Mizrahi, 1971), the crime drama Zig Zig (László Szabó, 1975) with Catherine Deneuve, and had a small part as the cellmate of Isabelle Huppert in Violette Nozière (Claude Chabrol, 1978). In Italy, she appeared in the comedy Il Ladrone/The Thief (Pasquale Festa Campanile, 1980). In a 1997 New York Times article, Katherine Knorr writes: “Lafont has in a tumultuous life done a bit of everything, from television movies to the stage, never quite the megastar but always a strong presence, smart and messed up all at the same time”. In the 1980s she appeared in Chabrol’s crime films Inspecteur Lavardin/Inspector Lavardin (Claude Chabrol, 1986) featuring Jean Poiret, and Masques/Masks (Claude Chabrol, 1987) with Philippe Noiret. She also played in Les saisons du plaisir/The Pleasure Seasons (1988) and other comedies by Jean-Pierre Mocky. Lafont won the César Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for L'Effrontée/Charlotte and Lulu (Claude Miller, 1985) starring Charlotte Gainsbourg. The energetic Lafont created in 1990 an audio-visual workshop to help young actors develop their creativity. She is the co-founder and on the committee that awards the Glace Gervais and an accompanying 100,000 franc prize to works competing in the Cannes Film Festival ‘Un certain Regard’ category. The award was designed to help bolster the budding careers of filmmakers. Her later films include Généalogies d'un crime/Genealogies of a Crime (Raul Ruiz, 1997) with Catherine Deneuve and the comedy Ripoux 3/Part-Time Cops (Claude Zidi, 2003) with Philippe Noiret. In May 2007, she chaired the jury for the fifth edition of the Award for Education presented at the 60th Cannes Film Festival. After her divorce from Blain in 1959, Bernadette Lafont married the Hungarian sculptor Diourka Medveczky. Although the marriage was difficult and ended in a divorce, there were three children: actress Élisabeth Lafont, David Lafont and the late actress Pauline Lafont, who died in the summer of 1988 under tragic circumstances. She went for a walk near the family property in the Cevennes and never returned. For many weeks, police searched and the popular press went on a feeding frenzy. When Pauline's body was finally found, it became clear she had fallen down in rough, lonely terrain. Lafont published her autobiography in 1997, an event heralded by a grand star-studded gala in Paris. For her long service to the French motion picture industry, she was given an Honorary César Award in 2003. She was made Officier de la Légion d'honneur (Officer of the Legion of Honour) in 2009. In 2013, Bernadette Lafont died in a hospital in her home town of Nimes.

Sources: Katherine Knorr (New York Times), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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French postcard by L'aventure carto, 2003, in the series Portraits de Stars - Acteurs étrangères, no. 15. Photo: Marcel Thomas.

English actress Charlotte Rampling (1946) became a legend with her ice-blue eyes, diamond-cut diction and much-remarked-upon cheekbones in such controversial classics like La Caduta degli dei/The Damned (1969) and Il Portiere di note/The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974). In Hollywood, she worked successfully with Woody Allen and Sidney Lumet, and this century she returned spectacularly to the A-list of the cinema in François Ozon’s Sous le sable/Under the Sand (2000), and Swimming Pool (2003).

Charlotte Rampling was born Tessa Charlotte Rampling in Sturmer, Great Britain, in 1946. She is the daughter of Anne Isabelle Rampling-Gurteen, a painter, and Godfrey Rampling, an army officer. Her father had won silver in the athletics track event 4x400m relay at the 1932 Olympics, and gold in the 4x400m relay at the 1936 Olympics. Charlotte attended the Jeanne d'Arc Académie in Versailles, France and the exclusive St. Hilda's School, Bushey, England. At 17 she was spotted on the street and asked to appear in a Cadbury television commercial. She enjoyed a successful modelling career before she made her first, uncredited screen appearance as a water skier in the comedy The Knack ...and How to Get It (Richard Lester, 1965). The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival. Later that year she played the female lead in the comedy Rotten to the Core (John Boulting, 1965) with Anton Rodgers and Eric Sykes. At the time London was swinging and the 20-year-old Rampling was one of the city’s ‘it’ girls. She played Meredith, the bitchy but beautiful roommate of Georgy (Lynn Redgrave) in the successful comedy-drama Georgy Girl (Silvio Narizzano, 1966). But that year, a traumatic event occurred, when her elder sister Sarah shot herself in Argentina after giving birth prematurely and losing her child. Charlotte was devastated by this loss, which she experienced as an abandonment by her sister. She and her father lied to her mother, telling her that Sarah had died of a stroke. Charlotte seemingly overcame this trauma and was able to continue acting. In 1967 she played the gunfighter Hana Wilde in The Superlative Seven, an episode of the hit series The Avengers with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. After this, her acting career blossomed in both English and French cinema. Among the early roles were the female leads in the British adventure film The Long Duel (Ken Annakin, 1967) starring Yul Brynner and Trevor Howard, and the thriller Target: Harry (Roger Corman, 1969).

Charlotte Rampling has performed controversial roles. In Luchino Visconti's classic, she played a young wife sent to a Nazi concentration camp. Critics praised her performance, and it cast her in a whole new image: mysterious, sensitive and ultimately tragic. ‘The Look’ as co-star Dirk Bogarde called it, became her trademark. She played Anne Boleyn in the film adaptation of Henry VIII and His Six Wives (Waris Hussein, 1972), with Keith Michell as Henry VIII. In the US, she played the wife of Robert Blake in the drama Corky (Leonard Horn, 1972). In 1972, Rampling also married the actor and publicist Bryan Southcombe and had one child, Barnaby Southcombe, (1972) now a television and film director. They were widely reported to be living in a ménage à trois with a male model, Randall Laurence, although she always denied there was ever any sexual relationship. She co-starred with Sean Connery in the science fiction/fantasy film Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974). In Il Portiere di notte/The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974). she portrayed a concentration camp survivor who is reunited with the Nazi guard (Dirk Bogarde) who tortured her and resumes their ambiguous relationship. In France, she offered a passionate rendering of a violent heiress confined to a mental institution in La Chair de l'orchidée/The Flesh of the Orchid (1975), an adaptation of the pulp novel, The Flesh of the Orchid (1948) by James Hadley Chase. The film was the directorial debut of French author and stage director Patrice Chéreau, and also stars Simone Signoret, Bruno Cremer and Edwige Feuillère. Other interesting European films were Un taxi mauve/The Purple Taxi (Yves Boisset, 1977) with Peter Ustinov, Philippe Noiret and Fred Astaire, and Max mon amour/Max, My Love (Nagisa Oshima, 1986), in which she played a woman who fell in love with a chimpanzee. Rampling gained recognition from American audiences in a remake of Raymond Chandler's detective story Farewell, My Lovely (Dirk Richards, 1975) with Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe. Later she stole the show with her part in Stardust Memories (Woody Allen, 1980) as a beautiful but emotionally fragile depressive. She had again success in Hollywood as the deceitful Laura in the acclaimed courtroom drama The Verdict (Sidney Lumet, 1982), starring Paul Newman. Five years later she appeared with Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro. in the American voodoo-themed thriller Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987), as an ill-fated woman whose heart is irrevocably extracted from her body.

In the following decade, Charlotte Rampling mainly worked for TV, such as in Great Expectations (Julian Jarrold, 1999), BBC's BAFTA award-winning adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel. She played the decayed spinster Miss Havisham opposite Ioan Gruffudd as Pip. Charlotte Rampling credits François Ozon with drawing her back to film in the 2000s, a period when she came to terms with the death of her eldest sister Sarah. Ozon gave her the lead role in his French drama Sous le sable/Under the Sand (François Ozon, 2000), which was nominated for three César Awards and was critically well received. Bob Mastrangelo at AllMovie: “Sous le Sable belongs to Charlotte Rampling. Delivering a commanding, devastating, and nuanced performance, Rampling portrays Marie Drillon, a middle-aged professor who goes through an emotional roller coaster after the sudden disappearance of her husband. Rampling beautifully handles Marie's various transformations, making it appear outwardly as if she is coping with reality, while inwardly she is collapsing.” The character she played in Ozon's Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003), Sarah Morton, was named in her sister's honour. For most of Rampling's life, she would say only that her sister had died of a brain haemorrhage; when she and her father heard the news, they agreed they would never let her mother know the truth. They kept their secret until Rampling's mother died in 2001. A year later, Rampling became a Dame of France's Legion. At 59, Rampling appeared in Vers le Sud/Heading South (Laurent Cantet, 2005), a film about sexual tourism. She plays Ellen, a professor of French literature and single Englishwoman, who holidays in 1970s Haiti to get the sexual attention she does not get at home. Ozon directed her in the costume drama Angel (François Ozon, 2007) She portrayed the mother of Keira Knightley's character in The Duchess (Saul Dibb, 2008), and she appeared in the terrorist thriller Cleanskin (Hadi Hajaig, 2010), starring Sean Bean and James Fox. Very interesting is the Polish-Swedish co-production The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski, 2011) starring Rutger Hauer as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, on whose 1564 painting The Procession to Calvary the film is inspired. She also was among the cast of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Charlotte Rampling married twice. She played the title role in the noir thriller I, Anna (2012) written and directed by her son, Barnaby Southcombe. In 1976, Rampling met French composer Jean Michel Jarre at a dinner party; and left her first husband Bryan Southcombe the next day. Two years later she married Jarre and had a second son, magician and singer David Jarre. She also brought up stepdaughter Émilie Jarre, now a fashion designer. For 20 years, she accompanied Jarre on his worldwide music and light shows. Then the marriage was publicly dissolved in 1997 when she learned from tabloid newspaper stories about Jarre's affairs with other women and had a nervous breakdown. Since 1998, she has been engaged to Jean-Noël Tassez, a French communications tycoon. Charlotte Rampling stays very active on the screen. In 2013 she played Dr. Evelyn Vogel in the American hit series Dexter, had a small part as the elderly Adriana do Prado in Night Train to Lisbon (Bille August 2013) and she appeared as Alice in Francois Ozon’s drama Jeune & jolie/Young & Beautiful (2013). In 2012 she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, both for her performance in the miniseries Restless (Edward Hall, 2012). For her performance in the film 45 Years (Edward Haigh, 2015), she won the Berlin Film Festival Award for Best Actress, the European Film Award for Best Actress, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 2017, she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 74th Venice International Film Festival for Hannah (Andrea Pallaoror, 2017). She received an Honorary César in 2001 and France's Legion of Honour in 2002. She was made an OBE in 2000 for her services to the arts and received the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the European Film Awards. In 2015, she released her autobiography, which she wrote in French, titled 'Qui Je Suis'. She later worked on an English translation, 'Who I Am', which was published in 2017. Recently, she appeared in the films Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021), Dune (Denis Villeneuve film, 2021) and Juniper (Matthew J. Saville, 2021)

Sources: Tracie Cooper (AllMovie), Bob Mastrangelo (AllMovie), Sholto Byrnes (The Independent), Pete Stampede, David K. Smith and Alan Hayes (The Avengers), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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French postcard in the series Portraits de Stars by L'aventure carto, no. 8, 2003. Photo: Marcel Thomas / Collection Gérard Gagnepain.

French actor of Spanish origin Louis de Funès (1914-1983) was one of the giants of French comedy alongside André Bourvil and Fernandel. In many of his over 130 films, he portrayed a humorously excitable, cranky man with a propensity to hyperactivity, bad faith, and uncontrolled fits of anger. Along with his short height (1.63 m) and his facial contortions, this hyperactivity produced a highly comic effect, especially opposite Bourvil, who always played calm, slightly naive, good-humored men.

Louis de Funès (French pronunciation: [lwi də fynɛs]) was born Louis Germain David de Funès de Galarza in Courbevoie, France in 1914. His father, Carlos Luis de Funès de Galarza had been a lawyer in Seville, Spain, but became a diamond cutter upon arriving in France. His mother, Leonor Soto Reguera was of Spanish and Portuguese extraction. Since the couple's families opposed their marriage, they settled in France in 1904. Known to friends and intimates as ‘Fufu’, the young De Funès was fond of drawing and piano playing and spoke French, Spanish, and English well. He studied at the prestigious Lycée Condorcet in Paris. He showed a penchant for tomfoolery, something which caused him trouble at school and later made it hard for him to hold down a job. He became a pianist, working mostly as a jazz pianist at Pigalle, the famous red-light district. There he made his customers laugh each time he made a grimace. He studied acting for one year at the Simon acting school. It proved to be a waste of time except for his meeting with actor Daniel Gélin, who would become a close friend. In 1936, he married Germaine Louise Elodie Carroyer with whom he had a son, Daniel (1937). In 1942, they divorced. During the occupation of Paris in the Second World War, he continued his piano studies at a music school, where he fell in love with a secretary, Jeanne Barthelémy de Maupassant, a grandniece of the famous author Guy de Maupassant. They married in 1943 and remained together for forty years until De Funès' death in 1983. The pair had two sons: Patrick (1944) and Olivier (1947). Patrick became a doctor who practiced in Saint-Germain en Laye. Olivier was an actor for a while, known for the son roles in his father's films, including Le Grand Restaurant/The Big Restaurant (Jacques Besnard, 1966), Fantômas se déchaine/Fantomas Strikes Back (André Hunebelle, 1965) starring Jean Marais, Les Grandes Vacances/The Big Vacation (Jean Girault, 1967), and Hibernatus (Edouard Molinaro, 1969) with Claude Gensac as De Funès’ wife, a role she played in many of his films. Olivier later worked as an aviator for Air France Europe.

Through the early 1940s, Louis de Funès continued playing piano at clubs, thinking there wasn't much call for a short, balding, skinny actor. His wife and Daniel Gélin encouraged him to overcome his fear of rejection. De Funès began his show business career in the theatre, where he enjoyed moderate success. At the age of 31, thanks to his contact with Daniel Gélin, he made his film debut with an uncredited bit part as a porter in La Tentation de Barbizon/The Temptation of Barbizon (1945, Jean Stelli) starring Simone Renant. For the next ten years, de Funès would appear in fifty films, but always in minor roles, usually as an extra, scarcely noticed by the audience. Sometimes he had a supporting part such as in the Fernandel comedy Boniface somnambule/The Sleepwalker (Maurice Labro, 1951) and the comedy-drama La vie d'un honnête homme/The Virtuous Scoundrel (Sacha Guitry, 1953) starring Michel Simon. In the meanwhile, he pursued a theatrical career. Even after he attained the status of a film star, he continued to play theatre. His stage career culminated in a magnificent performance in the play Oscar, a role which he would later reprise in the film version of 1967. During this period, De Funès developed a pattern of daily activities: in the morning he did dubbing for recognized artists such as Renato Rascel and the Italian comic Totò, during the afternoon he worked in film, and in the theater in the evening. A break came when he appeared as the black-market pork butcher Jambier (another small role) in the well-known WWII comedy, La Traversée de Paris/Four Bags Full (Claude Autant-Lara, 1956) starring Jean Gabin and Bourvil. In his next film, the mediocre comedy Comme un cheveu sur la soupe/Crazy in the Noodle (Maurice Régamey, 1957), De Funès finally played the leading role. More interesting was Ni vu, ni connu/Neither Seen Nor Recognized (Yves Robert, 1958). He achieved stardom with the comedy Pouic-Pouic (Jean Girault, 1963) opposite Mireille Darc. This successful film guaranteed De Funès top billing in all of his subsequent films.

Between 1964 and 1979, Louis de Funès topped France's box office of the year's most successful films seven times. At the age of 49, De Funès unexpectedly became a superstar with the international success of two films. Fantômas (André Hunebelle, 1964) was France's own answer to the James Bond frenzy and lead to a trilogy co-starring Jean Marais and Mylène Demongeot. The second success was the crime comedy Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez/The Gendarme of St. Tropez (Jean Girault, 1964) with Michel Galabru. After their first successful collaboration on Pouic-Pouic, director Girault had perceived De Funès as the ideal actor to play the part of the accident-prone gendarme. The film led to a series of six 'Gendarme' films. De Funès's collaboration with director Gérard Oury produced a memorable tandem of de Funès with Bourvil, another great comic actor, in Le Corniaud/The Sucker (Gérard Oury, 1964). The successful partnership was repeated two years later in La Grande Vadrouille/Don't Look Now - We're Being Shot At (Gérard Oury, 1966), one of the most successful and the largest grossing film ever made in France, drawing an audience of 17,27 million. It remains his greatest success. Oury envisaged a further reunion of the two comics in his historical comedy La Folie des grandeurs/Delusions of Grandeur (Gérard Oury, 1970), but Bourvil's death in 1970 led to the unlikely pairing of de Funès with Yves Montand in this film. Very successful, even in the USA, was Les aventures de Rabbi Jacob/The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (Gérard Oury, 1973) with Suzy Delair. De Funès played a bigoted Frenchman who finds himself forced to impersonate a popular rabbi while on the run from a group of assassins. In 1975, Oury had scheduled to make Le Crocodile/The Crocodile with De Funès as a South American dictator, but in March 1975, the actor was hospitalised for heart problems and was forced to take a rest from acting. The Crocodile project was canceled.

After his recovery, Louis de Funès collaborated with Claude Zidi, in a departure from his usual image. Zidi wrote for him L'aile ou la cuisse/The Wing and the Thigh (Claude Zidi, 1976), opposite Coluche as his son. He played a well-known gourmet and publisher of a famous restaurant guide, who is waging a war against a fast-food entrepreneur. It was a new character full of nuances and frankness and arguably the best of his roles. In 1980, De Funès realised a long-standing dream to make a film version of Molière's play, L'Avare/The Miser (Louis de Funès, Jean Girault, 1980). In 1982, De Funès made his final film, Le Gendarme et les gendarmettes/Never Play Clever Again (Tony Aboyantz, Jean Girault, 1982). Unlike the characters he played, de Funès was said to be a very shy person in real life. He became a knight of France's Légion d'honneur in 1973. He resided in the Château de Clermont, a 17th-century monument, located in the commune of Le Cellier, which is situated near Nantes in France. In his later years, he suffered from a heart condition after having suffered a heart attack caused by straining himself too much with his stage antics. Louis de Funès died of a massive stroke in 1983, a few months after making Le Gendarme et les gendarmettes. He was laid to rest in the Cimetière du Cellier, the cemetery situated in the grounds of the château. Films de France: “Although fame was a long time coming, Louis de Funès is regarded today as not just a great comic actor with an unfaltering ability to make his audience laugh, but practically an institution in his own right. His many films bear testimony to the extent of his comic genius and demonstrate the tragedy that he never earned the international recognition that he certainly deserved.”

Sources: Steve Shelokhonov (IMDb), Films de France, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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French postcard by L'Aventure Carto, Cinéastes, no. 6, 2003. Photo: Marcel Thomas / Collection Gérard Gagnepain. (Edition of 120 ex.)

Jean Renoir (1894-1979) was one of the major French film directors before WW II. His films La Grande Illusion/The Great Illusion (1937) and La Règle du Jeu/The Rules of the Game (1939) belong to the masterpieces of the French cinema. During the German invasion of France in 1941, he moved to Hollywood where he directed This Land Is Mine (1943), and The Southerner (1945). He later became an American citizen.

Jean Renoir was born in 1894 in Paris, France. He was the son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and had a happy childhood. Pierre Renoir was his brother, and Claude Renoir was his nephew. He fought in the French army during World War I and was wounded in battle. His wounds never healed properly and he suffered from it for the rest of his life. He recuperated by watching films with his leg elevated. Later, he was honoured with the Croix de Guerre. After the end of World War I, he moved from scriptwriting to filmmaking. He married his father's last model, Catherine Hessling. Renoir wanted to make a star of her and directed her in Catherine ou Une vie sans Joie/Backbiters (1924). His second feature was the Emile Zola adaptation Nana (1926) starring Hessling, Werner Krauss, and Jean Angelo. The film's extravagances include two magnificent set pieces – a horse race and an open air ball. The film never made a profit, and the commercial failure of the film robbed Renoir of the opportunity to make such an ambitious film again for several years. Renoir gradually sold paintings inherited from his father to finance his films. Renoir and Hessling separated in 1930, although he remained married to her until 1943. His next partner was Marguerite Renoir, whom he never married, although she took his name.

In 1931 Jean Renoir directed his first sound films, the comedy On purge bébé/Baby's Laxative (1931), based upon the play by Georges Feydeau, and La Chienne/The Bitch (1931). with Michel Simon. The following year he made Boudu sauvé des eaux/Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), a farcical sendup of the pretensions of a middle-class bookseller and his family, who meet with comic, and ultimately disastrous, results when they attempt to reform a vagrant played by Michel Simon. He then directed La Nuit du carrefour/Night at the Crossroads (1932), based on a novel by Georges Simenon and starring Renoir's brother Pierre Renoir as Simenon's popular detective, Inspector Maigret. Partie de campagne/A Day in the Country (1936) was based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, who was a friend of Renoir's father. It chronicles a love affair over a single summer afternoon in 1860 along the banks of the Seine. Renoir never finished filming due to weather problems, but producer Pierre Braunberger turned the material into a release in 1946, ten years after it was shot. By the middle of the 1930s, Renoir was associated with the Popular Front. Several of his films, such as Le Crime de Monsieur Lange/The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1935) with René Lefèvre, La vie est à nous/Life Belongs to Us (1936) and La Marseillaise (1938), reflect the movement's politics. Erich von Stroheim and Jean Gabin starred in one of his better-known films, the war film La Grande Illusion/The Great Illusion (1937). A film on the theme of brotherhood, relating a series of escape attempts by French POWs during World War I. It won the Best Artistic Ensemble award at the Venice Film Festival and was the first foreign-language film to receive a nomination for the Oscar for Best Picture. He followed it with another success, La Bête Humaine/The Human Beast (1938), a Film Noir based on the novel by Émile Zola and starring Simone Simon and Jean Gabin. With an ensemble cast, Renoir made La Règle du Jeu/The Rules of the Game (1939), a satire on contemporary French society. Renoir played the character Octave, who serves to connect characters from different social strata. The film was his greatest commercial failure. A few weeks after the outbreak of World War II, the film was banned by the government. Renoir was a known pacifist and supporter of the French Communist Party, which made him suspect in the tense weeks before the war began. In July 1939, Renoir went to Rome with Karl Koch and his future second wife Dido Freire to work on the script for a film version of Tosca. He abandoned the project to return to France and make himself available for military service.

Jean Renoir and Dido Freire left France in 1941 during the German invasion and moved to Hollywood. Renoir had difficulty finding projects that suited him. His first American film, Swamp Water (1941), was a drama starring Dana Andrews and Walter Brennan. He co-produced and directed an anti-Nazi film set in France, This Land Is Mine (1943), starring Maureen O'Hara and Charles Laughton. The Southerner (1945) is a film about Texas sharecroppers that is often regarded as his best American film. He was nominated for an Oscar for Directing for this work. Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) is an adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel, 'Le Journal d'une femme de chambre', starring Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith. His The Woman on the Beach (1947), starring Joan Bennett and Robert Ryan, was heavily reshot and reedited after it fared poorly among preview audiences in California. Both films were poorly received and they were the last films Renoir made in America. At this time, Renoir became a naturalised US citizen. In 1949 Renoir traveled to India to shoot The River (1951), his first colour film. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film is both a meditation on human beings' relationship with nature and a coming of age story of three young girls in colonial India. The film won the International Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951.

After returning to work in Europe, Jean Renoir made a trilogy of colour musical comedies on the subjects of theatre, politics, and commerce: Le Carrosse d'or/The Golden Coach (1953) with Anna Magnani, French Cancan (1954) with Jean Gabin and María Félix, and Eléna et les hommes/Elena and Her Men (1956) with Ingrid Bergman and Jean Marais. During the same period, Renoir produced Clifford Odets' play 'The Big Knife' in Paris. He also wrote his own play, 'Orvet', and produced it in Paris featuring Leslie Caron. Renoir made his next films with techniques adapted from live television. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe/Picnic on the Grass (1959), starring Paul Meurisse and Catherine Rouvel, was filmed on the grounds of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's home in Cagnes-sur-Mer, and Le Testament du docteur Cordelier/The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (1959), starring Jean-Louis Barrault, was made in the streets of Paris and its suburbs. Renoir's penultimate film, Le Caporal épinglé/The Elusive Corporal (1962), with Jean-Pierre Cassel and Claude Brasseur, is set among French POWs during their internment in labour camps by the Nazis during World War II. The film explores the twin human needs for freedom, on the one hand, and emotional and economic security, on the other.
Renoir's loving memoir of his father, 'Renoir, My Father' (1962) describes the profound influence his father had on him and his work. As funds for his film projects were becoming harder to obtain, Renoir continued to write screenplays for income. He published a novel, 'The Notebooks of Captain Georges', in 1966. Captain Georges is the nostalgic account of a wealthy young man's sentimental education and love for a peasant girl. Renoir's last film is Le Petit théâtre de Jean Renoir/The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir (1969). The film is a series of three short films made in a variety of styles. It is, in many ways, one of his most challenging, avant-garde, and unconventional works. Unable to obtain financing for his films and suffering declining health, Renoir spent his last years receiving friends at his home in Beverly Hills and writing novels and his memoirs. Renoir's memoir, 'My Life and My Film's, was published in 1974. In 1975, he received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, and the government of France elevated him to the rank of commander in the Légion d'honneur. Jean Renoir passed away in 1979 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, of a heart attack. Although he was an American citizen, he was buried in France following a state funeral. From 1957 till his death in 1979, he was married to Dido Freire. His son Alain Renoir (1921-2008) became a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and a scholar of medieval English literature.

Sources: Wikipedia, and IMDb.

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French postcard in the series Portraits de Stars - Chanteurs Français by L'Aventure Carto, no. 2. Photo: Marcel Thomas Collection Gérard Gagnepain. This postcard was printed in an edition of 120 cards.

Legendary Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel (1929-1978) was one of the most important and influential representatives of the French chanson. At the height of his success, in 1966, he chose to stop singing to devote himself to theatre and cinema. Brel has sold over 25 million records worldwide. There have been at least 400 recorded versions of his song, Ne me quitte pas/ If You Go Away, in over 15 different languages by performers like Marlene Dietrich, Rod McKuen, Nana Mouskouri, Nina Simone and Sting. Terry Jacks' version of Le Moribond , Seasons in the Sun became a global pop hit in 1974. Brel’s boundless enthusiasm toward life, his inexhaustible energy and his respect for ordinary people remain unforgettable.

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