Jean Renoir

Unfinished before Bazin died, this is his incomplete last word on his favorite director. Truffaut offers notes throughout and gives an introduction, and Renoir himself offers a humble note of gratitude for his old friend at the outset. The writings contained in the book are something of a pastiche, some complete and some not — some merely some scribblings transcribed by Truffaut, because Bazin didn’t get around to writing something more linear and coherent. Still, thoughtful observations about that not only give us more of a picture of Bazin’s unique and important approach to the cinema, but also to the world(s) presented in Renoir’s films. Bazin throughout launches attacks on all things Expressionist. “Expressionism” he would describe as any approach to film that supplants reality by means of style and form. The notions of the “screen” and the “frame” are fundamentally Expressionist, not only in terms of the famous German film movement but in terms of their prioritizing of the styles presented and their enigmatic qualities rather than how they offer an image or a surface that corresponds to the real. Bazin rejects the frame, because the frame pretends to contain all that is relevant.