by Jean Renoir
Films in Review (Originally Published in Cahiers du Cinema 1952)
I HAVE BEEN asked about my evolution since LA REGLE DU JEU. I don’t think it is of the slightest importance.
In the first place, no one person makes a film. It is the product of teamwork. There is, naturally, one person who influences the team, and he becomes the animator, the leader, the boss, as workers say.
In the beginning of American film it was often the star who was the prime-mover, and it is quite correct to say “Douglas Fairbanks’ film,” or “Mary Pickford’s film,” because they influenced and inspired the work of everybody.
Sometimes the writer has been the one, but mostly it has been the director. In Europe a film is, before everything else, the work of its director, and of the technical methods his personality causes him to select and employ.
Being a director, I am convinced that I, and persons like me, are like chefs, capable of creating a good dinner.
We cannot do anything without the collaboration of our saucemakers, our bakers, our wine stewards, etc. Nor without the owner of the restaurant.
There are owners of high class restaurants, and of low class ones. The latter always bother their chef with advice - a little more salt, too much tarragon in this chicken. The high class producers - excuse me, restaurant owners - leave their chefs alone. Their talent consists in choosing them judiciously, and in surrounding them with good cooks and helpers, and with the technical equipment and means congenial to their personalities.
If this doesn’t work, there is always the last resource of firing everybody.
In this world, only results count. And my results are the product not only of my work, but of the work of actors, technicians, and laborers. That is why my evolution, by itself, cannot explain the difference between LA REGLE DU JEU and THE RIVER. It is necessary to study the evolution of all the collaborators who helped me to make these two films, and all the films I made between 1939 and 1949.
Nobody develops alone. Even when separated by great distances, people of similar civilizations move approximately together. The world that we know, our civilization, where lie our interests and affections, follows this path.
I spent ten years outside of France. The first time I returned to Paris I sat down with my old friends and we took up our conversation not where it had left off, but where it would have arrived if we had continued seeing each other every day.
I speak, naturally, of my very close friends.
This, by the way, is rather disquieting. I am sure that this is the way it was for me n my return to France. If others feel this way, and if they are a majority, the idea of a national group, which we in France have held since Joan of Arc, becomes of less importance, and of doubtful validity.
We progress by groups, not individually.
There are a thousand ways to create. One can grow potatoes, procreate children, discover a new planet.
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