Roland Toutain was a French actor, songwriter and stuntman. he is most well known for playing the aviator André Jurieux in Jean Renoir's film La Règle du jeu.

He first gained fame in the film The Mystery of the Yellow Room and its sequel The Perfume of the Lady in Black. He was good friends with fellow actor Jean Marais, who organized his funeral.

Selected filmography[link]

• Yoshiwara (1937)

See also[link]

• L'Éternel retour

External links[link]

• Roland Toutain at the Internet Movie Database

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The Roland of legend blowing his horn Oliphaunt to summon the emperor to his aid

Roland (Frankish: Hruodland) (died 14 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. Historically, Roland was military governor of the Breton March, with responsibility for defending the frontier of Francia against the Bretons. His only historical attestation is in Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni, which describes him as Hruodlandus Brittannici limitis praefectus ("Roland, prefect of the limits of Brittany") when narrating his death at the Battle of Roncesvalles, when the rearguard, under his command, and the baggage train of a Frankish army was beset by rebellious Basques.^[1]

Roland's death during retreat from the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in Iberia was transmogrified in later medieval and Renaissance literature. He became the chief paladin of the emperor Charlemagne and a central figure in the legendary material surrounding him, collectively known as the Matter of France. The first and most famous of these epic treatments was the Old French Chanson de Roland of the eleventh century. Two masterpieces of Italian Renaissance poetry, the Orlando innamorato and Orlando furioso, are even further detached from history than the earlier Chansons. Roland is poetically associated with his sword Durendal, his horse Veillantif, and his horn Oliphaunt.

History[link]

There exists only one historical mention of a Frankish Roland, found in the section of Vita Karoli Magni on the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, written by Charlemagne's courtier and biographer Einhard. The passage, which appears in Chapter 9, mentions that Hroudlandus (a Latinization of the Frankish Hroudland) was among those killed in the battle:

While he was vigorously pursuing the Saxon war, almost without a break, and after he had placed garrisons at selected points along the border, [Charles] marched into Spain [in 778] with as large a force as he could mount. His army passed through the Pyrenees and [Charles] received the surrender of all the towns and fortified places he encountered. He was returning [to Francia] with his army safe and intact, but high in the Pyrenees on that return trip he briefly experienced the Basques. That place is so thoroughly covered with thick forest that it is the perfect spot for an ambush. [Charles's] army was forced by the narrow terrain to proceed in a long line and [it was at that spot], high on the mountain, that the Basques set their ambush. [...] The Basques had the advantage in this skirmish because of the lightness of their weapons and the nature of the terrain, whereas the Franks were disadvantaged by the heaviness of their arms and the unevenness of the land. Eggihard, the overseer of the king's table, Anselm, the count of the palace, and Roland, the lord of the Breton March, along with many others died in that skirmish. But this deed could not be avenged at that time, because the enemy had so dispersed after the attack that there was no indication as to where they could be found.^[2]

Roland was evidently the first official appointed to direct Frankish policy in Breton affairs, as local Franks under the Merovingian dynasty had not previously pursued any specific relationship with the Bretons. Their frontier castle districts such as Vitré, Ille-et-Vilaine) south of Mont Saint-Michel are now divided between Normandy and Brittany. The distinctive culture of this region preserves the present-day Gallo language and legends of local heroes such as Roland. Roland's successor in Brittania Nova was Guy of Nantes, who like Roland, was unable to exert Frankish expansion over Brittany and merely sustained a Breton presence in the Carolingian Empire.

According to legend, Roland was laid to rest in the basilica at Blaye, near Bordeaux, on the site of the citadel.

Legend[link]

First page of the Chanson de Roland in the Oxford Manuscript

Roland was a popular legendary figure in medieval Europe. Over the next several centuries, Roland became a "pop icon" in medieval minstrel culture. According to many legends, he was a nephew of Charlemagne (whether or not this was true is unknown), and turned his life into an epic tale of the noble Christian killed by Islamic forces, which forms part of the medieval Matter of France.

The tale of Roland's death is retold in the eleventh century poem The Song of Roland, where he is equipped with the Olifant (a signalling horn) and an unbreakable sword, enchanted by various Christian relics, named Durendal. The Song contains a highly romanticized and embellished account of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass and Roland's death, setting the tone for later fantastical depiction of Charlemagne's court. It was adapted and modified throughout the Middle Ages, including an influential Latin prose version Historia Caroli Magni (also known as the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle), which also includes Roland's battle with a Saracen giant named Ferracutus who is only vulnerable at his navel (the story was later adapted in the anonymous Franco-Venetian epic L'Entrée d'Espagne (c.1320) and in the 14th century Italian epic La Spagna (attributed to the Florentine Sostegno di Zanobi and likely composed between 1350–1360).

Other texts give further legendary accounts of Roland's life. His friendship with Olivier and his engagement with Olivier's sister Aude are told in Girart de Vienne by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube. Roland's youth and the acquisition of his horse Veillantif and sword are described in Aspremont. Roland also appears in Quatre Fils Aymon where he is contrasted with Renaud de Montauban against whom he occasionally fights.

Statue of Roland, facade detail of the railway station, Metz, France

In Norway, the tales of Roland are part of the 13th century Karlamagnús saga.

In the Divine Comedy Dante sees Roland's spirit in the Heaven of Mars together with others who fought for the faith.

Roland appears in Entrée d'Espagne, a 14th century Franco-Venetian chanson de geste (in which he is transformed into a knight errant, similar to heroes from the Arthurian romances) and La Spagna, a 14th century Italian epic.

From the fifteenth century onwards, he appears as a central character in a sequence of Italian verse romances (as "Orlando"), including Morgante by Luigi Pulci, Orlando Innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo, and Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. (See below for his later history in Italian verse). The Orlandino of Pietro Aretino then waxed satirical about the "cult of personality" of Orlando the hero.

In Germany, Roland gradually became a symbol of the independence of the growing cities from the local nobility. In the late Middle Ages many cities sported the display of a defiant Roland statue on their marketplace. The Roland in Wedel was erected in 1450 as symbol of market justice, and the Roland statue in front of the town hall of Bremen (1404) is listed together with the town hall on the List of World Heritage Site from the UNESCO since 2004.

In Aragón there are several placenames related to Roldán (o Rolando): la Breca de Roldán (in Spanish la Brecha de Roldán, in French La Brèche de Roland) and Salto d´o Roldán (in Spanish El Salto de Roldán).

In Catalonia Roland (or Rotllà, as it is rendered in Catalan) became a legendary giant. Numerous places in Catalonia (both North and South) have a name related to Rotllà. In step with the trace left by the character in the whole Pyrenean area, Basque Errolan turns up in numerous legends and place-names associated with a mighty giant, usually a heathen, capable of launching huge stones. Interestingly, Basque word erraldoi ("giant") stems from Errolan.^{[citation needed]}

In the Faroe Islands Roland appears in the ballad of "Runtsivalstríðið" (Battle of Roncevaux)

More recently Roland's tale has been exploited by historians exploring the development of the early-modern Christian understanding of Islamic culture. In 1972 P. M. Holt used Roland's words to begin an essay about Henry Stubbe: "Paien ont tort e crestiien ont dreit" — "Pagans are wrong and Christians are right."

The Orlando narrative inspired several composers, amongst whom were Claudio Monteverdi, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Antonio Vivaldi and George Frideric Handel, who composed an Italian-language opera with Orlando.

The English expression, "to give a Roland for an Oliver", meaning either to offer a quid pro quo or to give as good as one gets, recalls the Chanson de Roland, and Roland's companion Oliver.^[3]

In popular culture[link]

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• Childe Rowland is a fairy tale, the most popular version being by Joseph Jacobs in his English Folk and Fairy Tales, published in 1892.
• English poet Robert Browning composed an epic poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came; the title of which comes from a line in William Shakespeare's play King Lear.
• American writer Stephen King has written a seven-volume series of epic fantasy novels called The Dark Tower, concerning the thousand-year quest of Roland Deschain, of Eld, based in part on Browning's Childe Roland.
• The game "Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken" has a character named Roland, one of the ancient heroes of the Scouring, who passes the sword Durandal to the main character. Several other characters in the game also take their names from the Song of Roland.
• The darkwave band The Cruxshadows released a song entitled "Roland," inspired by this legend, on their single Quicksilver.
• Roland is the leader of the Paladins in the live action movie Jumper (2008).
• Roland is the default name for the Paladin champion class hero in the game Master of Magic.
• Roland is in Age of Empires II.
• The Orlando character who appears in Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series is an amalgamation of this character and several other fictional Orlandoes/Rolands.
• The song "Rolandskvadet" by Norwegian folk-metal band Glittertind is about Roland.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Adriana Kremenjas-Danicic (Ed.): Roland's European Paths. Europski dom Dubrovnik, Dubrovnik 2006 (ISBN 953-95338-0-5).
• Susan P. Millinger, "Epic Values: The Song of Roland," in Jason Glenn (ed), The Middle Ages in Texts and Texture: Reflections on Medieval Sources (Toronto, University of Toronto, 2012),

Jean Renoir
Born	(1894-09-15)15 September 1894 Paris, France
Died	12 February 1979(1979-02-12) (aged 84) Beverly Hills, California, United States
Occupation	Actor, director, screenwriter, producer, author
Years active	1924–1978
Spouse	Catherine Hessling (1920–1930) Dido Freire (1944–1979)

Jean Renoir (French pronunciation: [ʁənwaʁ]; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. His pictures Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. As an author, he wrote the definitive biography of his father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Renoir, My Father (1962). Jean Renoir was ranked by the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of critics as the fourth greatest director of all time.^[1]

Early life and career[link]

The young Renoir with Gabrielle Renard in a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Renoir was born in the Montmartre district of Paris, France. He was the second son of Aline Charigot and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He was also the brother of Pierre Renoir, a noted French stage and film actor; the uncle of Claude Renoir, a cinematographer; and the father of Alain Renoir^(fr), professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

As a child, Renoir moved with his family to the south of France. He and the rest of the Renoir family were the subjects of many of his father's paintings. His father's financial success ensured that the young Renoir was educated at fashionable boarding schools, which, as he later wrote, he continually ran away from.^[2]

At the outbreak of World War I Renoir was serving in the French cavalry. Later, after receiving a bullet in his leg, he served as a reconnaissance pilot.^[3] His leg injury left him with a permanent limp, but allowed him to discover the cinema, where he used to recuperate with his leg elevated while watching the films of Charlie Chaplin and others.^[4][5] After the war, Renoir followed his father's suggestion and tried his hand at making ceramics, but he soon set that aside to make films, inspired, in particular, by Erich von Stroheim's work.^[6][7]

In 1924, Renoir directed the first of his nine silent films, most of which starred his first wife, who was also his father's last model, Catherine Hessling.^[8] At this stage his films did not produce a return, and Renoir gradually sold paintings inherited from his father to finance them.^[9]

International success in the 1930s[link]

During the 1930s Renoir enjoyed great success as a filmmaker. In 1931 he directed his first sound films, On purge bébé (Baby's Laxative)^[10] and La Chienne (The Bitch).^[11] The following year he made Boudu Saved From Drowning (Boudu sauvé des eaux), 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.^[12]

By the middle of the decade Renoir was associated with the Popular Front, and several of his films, such as The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, 1935), Life Belongs to Us (1936) and La Marseillaise (1938), reflect the movement's politics.^[13][14]

In 1937 he made one of his most well-known films, Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion), starring Erich von Stroheim and Jean Gabin. A film on the theme of brotherhood about a series of escape attempts by French POWs during World War I, it was enormously successful but was also banned in Germany, and later in Italy after having won the "Best Artistic Ensemble" award at the Venice Film Festival.^[15] It was the first foreign language film to receive a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture. This was followed by another cinematic success: The Human Beast (La Bête Humaine) (1938), a film noir tragedy based on the novel by Émile Zola and starring Simone Simon and Jean Gabin.^[16]

In 1939, now able to co-finance his own films,^[17] Renoir made The Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu), a satire on contemporary French society with an ensemble cast.^[18] Renoir himself played the character Octave, a sort of master of ceremonies in the film.^[19] The film was met with derision by Parisian audiences upon its premiere and was extensively reedited, but without success.^[20] It was his greatest commercial failure.^[21] A few weeks after the outbreak of World War II, the film was banned. The ban was lifted briefly in 1940, but after the fall of France it was banned again.^[22] Subsequently the original negative of the film was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid.^[22] It was not until the 1950s that French film enthusiasts Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand, with Renoir's cooperation, were able to reconstruct a near-complete print of the film.^[23][24] Today The Rules of the Game appears frequently near the top of critics' polls of the best films ever made.^[25][26]

Hollywood years[link]

A week after the disastrous premiere of The Rules of the Game, in July 1939, Renoir went to Rome with Karl Koch and Dido Freire, subsequently his second wife, to work on the script for a film version of Tosca.^[27][28] This he abandoned to return to France in August 1939, to make himself available for military service.^[29] At the age of 45, he became a lieutenant in the French Army Film Service, and was sent back to Italy, to teach film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, and resume work on Tosca.^[27][30][31] The French government hoped this cultural exchange would help maintain friendly relations with Italy, which had not yet entered the war.^[27][30][32] As war approached, however, he returned to France^[27][33] and then, after Germany invaded France in May 1940, he fled to the United States with Dido.^[34][35]

In Hollywood, Renoir had difficulty finding projects that suited him.^[36] In 1943, he co-produced and directed an anti-Nazi film set in France, This Land Is Mine, starring Maureen O'Hara and Charles Laughton.^[37][38] Two years later, he made The Southerner, a film about Texas sharecroppers that is often regarded as his best work in America and one for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Directing.^[39][40][41]

In 1945 he made Diary of a Chambermaid, an adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel, Le Journal d'une femme de chambre, starring Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith.^[42][43] 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.^[44] Both films were poorly received and were the last films Renoir made in America.^[45][46][47] At this time, Renoir became a naturalized citizen of the United States.^[48]

A transatlantic life[link]

In 1949 Renoir traveled to India and made The River, his first color film.^[49] Based on the novel of the same name 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.^[50] The film won the International Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951.^[51]

After returning to work in Europe, Renoir made a trilogy of Technicolor musical comedies on the subjects of theater, politics and commerce:^[52] Le Carrosse d'or (The Golden Coach) (1953) with Anna Magnani,^[53] French Cancan with Jean Gabin and María Félix (1955)^[54] and Eléna et les hommes (Elena and Her Men) with Ingrid Bergman and Jean Marais (1956).^[55] During the same period, Renoir produced in Paris the Clifford Odets play, The Big Knife, and wrote and produced in Paris for Leslie Caron his own play, Orvet.^[56][57]

Renoir's next films were made in 1959 using techniques Renoir adapted from live television at the time.^[58] Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Picnic on the Grass), 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), starring Jean-Louis Barrault, was made in the streets of Paris and its suburbs.^[59][60]

In 1962 Renoir made what was to be his penultimate film, Le Caporal épinglé (The Elusive Corporal) with Jean-Pierre Cassel and Claude Brasseur.^[61] Set among French POWs during their internment in labor 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.^[62][63]

In 1962, Renoir published a loving memoir of his father, Renoir, My Father, in which he described the profound influence his father had on him and his work.^[64] As funds for his film projects were becoming harder to obtain, Renoir continued to write screenplays and then wrote a novel, The Notebooks of Captain Georges, published in 1966.^[65][66] Captain Georges is the nostalgic account of a wealthy young man's sentimental education and love for a peasant girl, a theme also explored earlier in his films Diary of a Chambermaid and Picnic on the Grass.^[67]

Last years[link]

Renoir made his last film in 1969, Le Petit théâtre de Jean Renoir (The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir).^[68] The film is a series of three short films made in a variety of styles and is, in many ways, one of his most challenging, avant-garde and unconventional works.^[69][70]

Thereafter, unable to find financing for his films and in declining health, Renoir spent the last years of his life receiving friends at his home in Beverly Hills and writing novels and his memoirs.^[71]

In 1973 Renoir was preparing a production of his stage play Carola with Leslie Caron and Mel Ferrer when he fell ill and was unable to direct. The producer Norman Lloyd, a friend and actor in The Southerner, took over the direction of the play, which was broadcast in the series program Hollywood Television Theater on WNET, Channel 13, New York on February 3, 1973.^[72]

In his memoirs My Life and My Films (1974) Renoir wrote of the influence exercised upon him by his cousin, Gabrielle Renard, the woman seen in the portrait by his father above. Shortly before his birth, she came to live with the Renoir family, and helped raise the young boy.^[73] She introduced him to the Guignol puppet shows in the Montmartre of his childhood: "She taught me to see the face behind the mask and the fraud behind the flourishes", he wrote. "She taught me to detest the cliché."^[74] He concluded his memoirs with the words he had often spoken as a child, "Wait for me, Gabrielle."^[75]

In 1975 he received a lifetime Academy Award for his contribution to the motion picture industry and that same year a retrospective of his work was shown at the National Film Theatre in London.^[76] Also in 1975, the government of France elevated him to the rank of commander in the Légion d'honneur.^[77]

Jean Renoir died in Beverly Hills, California on February 12, 1979. His body was returned to France and buried beside his family in the cemetery at Essoyes, Aube, France.^[78]

Legacy[link]

On his death, fellow director and friend Orson Welles wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times, "Jean Renoir: The Greatest of all Directors".^[79]

Jean Renoir has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6212 Hollywood Blvd.^[80] Several of his ceramics were collected by Albert Barnes and can be found on display beneath his father's paintings at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania.^[81]

Filmography[link]

Selected writings[link]

• 1955: Orvet, Paris: Gallimard, play.
• 1962: Renoir, Paris: Hachette (Renoir, My Father), biography.
• 1966: Les Cahiers du Capitaine Georges, Paris: Gallimard (The Notebooks of Captain Georges), novel.
• 1974: Ma Vie et mes Films, Paris: Flammarion (My Life and My Films), autobiography.
• 1974: Écrits 1926-1971 (Claude Gauteur, ed.), Paris: Pierre Belfond, writings.
• 1976: Carola, in "L'Avant-Scène du Théâtre" no. 597, November 1, 1976, screenplay.
• 1978: Le Coeur à l'aise, Paris: Flammarion, novel.
• 1978 Julienne et son amour; suivi d'En avant Rosalie!, Paris: Henri Veyrier, screenplays.
• 1979: Jean Renoir: Entretiens et propos (Jean Narboni, ed.), Paris: Éditions de l'étoile/Cahiers du Cinéma, interviews and remarks.
• 1979: Le crime de l'Anglais, Paris: Flammarion, novel.
• 1980: Geneviève, Paris: Flammarion, novel.
• 1981: Œuvres de cinéma inédités (Claude Gauteur, ed.), Paris: Gallimard, synopses and treatments.
• 1984: Lettres d'Amérique (Dido Renoir & Alexander Sesonske, eds.), Paris: Presses de la Renaissance ISBN 2-85616-287-8, correspondence.
• 1989: Renoir on Renoir: Interviews, Essays, and Remarks (Carol Volk, tr.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 1994: Jean Renoir: Letters (David Thompson and Lorraine LoBianco, eds.), London: Faber & Faber, correspondence.

Awards[link]

• Prix Louis Delluc, for Les Bas-Fonds (The Lower Depths), 1936^[82]
• Chevalier de Légion d'honneur, 1936^[82]
• National Board of Review, Top Ten Foreign Film, for The Lower Depths, 1937^[83]
• International Jury Cup, Venice Film Festival, for La Grande Illusion, 1937^[84]
• National Board of Review, Best Foreign Language Film, for La Grande Illusion, 1938^[85]
• National Board of Review, Top Ten Film and Best Director, for The Southerner, 1945^[86]
• Best Film, Venice Festival, for The Southerner, 1946^[87]
• National Board of Review, Top Ten Film, for The Diary of a Chambermaid, 1946^[88]
• Venice Film Festival: International Award The River, 1951^[89]
• National Board of Review, Top Five Foreign Films, for The River, 1951^[90]
• Grand Prix de l'Academie du Cinéma for French Cancan, 1956^[91]
• Selznick Golden Laurel Award for lifetime work, Brazilian Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro, 1958^[92]
• Prix Charles Blanc, Académie française, for Renoir, My Father, biography of father, 1963^[93]
• Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts, University of California, Berkeley, 1963^[94]
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1964^[94]
• Best European Film (Bedste europæiske film), Bodil Awards, for The Rules of the Game (Spillets regler), 1966^[95]
• Osella d'Oro as a master of the cinema, Venice Festival, 1968^[96]
• Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Royal College of Art, London, 1971^[72]
• Honorary Academy Award for Career Accomplishment, 1974^[97]
• Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur, 1975^[77]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Jean Renoir at the Internet Movie Database
• Jean Renoir: A Bibliography of Materials in the University of California at Berkeley Library.
• Interview conducted in 1960 with Columbia University's Oral History Research Office.
• Je m’appelle Jean Renoir. Site at the University of Nancy, France. (In French)
• Faulkner, Christopher. "An Archive of the (Political) Unconscious" Canadian Journal of Communication [Online], 26 1 Jan 2001 — analysis of Renoir's FBI files.
• Jean Renoir at Find a Grave