Julien Carette (23 December 1897 – 20 July 1966) was a French film actor. He appeared in 127 films between 1931 and 1964. He suffered fatal burns when his nylon shirt caught fire from his cigarette; apparently he had fallen asleep while smoking.

Selected filmography[link]

• Grand Illusion (1937)
• La Bête Humaine (1938)
• The Rules of the Game (1939)
• Service de nuit (1944)
• Keep an Eye on Amelia (1949)
• Une si jolie petite plage (1949)
• ...Sans laisser d'adresse (1951)
• His Last Twelve Hours (1951)
• Agence matrimoniale (1951)
• Au diable la vertu (1953)
• Fraternité (TV) (1954)
• Si Paris nous était conté (1956)
• Archimède le clochard (1959)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Julien Carette at the Internet Movie Database
• Julien Carette at AllRovi

This article about a French film actor or actress is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Jean Gabin (17 May 1904 – 15 November 1976) was a French actor.

Biography[link]

Born Jean-Alexis Moncorgé in Paris, he grew up in the village of Mériel in the Seine-et-Oise (now Val-d'Oise) département, about 22 mi (35 km) north of Paris. The son of cabaret entertainers, he attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly. Leaving school early, he worked as a laborer until the age of 19 when he entered show business with a bit part in a Folies Bergères production. He continued performing in a variety of minor roles before going into the military.

After completing his military service, Gabin returned to the entertainment business, working under the stage name of Jean Gabin at whatever was offered in the Parisian music halls and operettas, imitating the singing style of Maurice Chevalier, which was the rage at the time. He was part of a troupe that toured South America, and upon returning to France found work at the Moulin Rouge. His performances started getting noticed, and better stage roles came along that led to parts in two silent films in 1928.

Two years later, he easily made the transition to talkies in a 1930 Pathé Frères production titled Chacun sa Chance. Playing secondary roles, Gabin made more than a dozen films over the next four years, including films directed by Maurice and Jacques Tourneur. However, he only gained real recognition for his performance in Maria Chapdelaine, a 1934 production directed by Julien Duvivier. Cast as a romantic hero in a 1936 war drama titled La Bandera, this second Duvivier-directed film established Gabin as a major star. The following year, he teamed up with Duvivier again, this time in the highly successful Pépé le Moko that became one of the top grossing films of 1937 worldwide; its popularity brought Gabin international recognition. That same year, he starred in the Jean Renoir masterpiece La Grande Illusion, an anti-war film that was a huge box office success and given universal critical acclaim, even running at a New York City theatre for an unprecedented six months. This was followed by another one of Renoir's great successes: La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast), a film noir tragedy based on the novel by Émile Zola and starring Gabin and Simone Simon, as well as Le Quai Des Brumes (Port of Shadows), one of director Marcel Carné's most acclaimed films.

Flooded with offers from Hollywood, for a time Gabin turned them all down until the outbreak of World War II. Following the German occupation of France, he joined Jean Renoir and Julien Duvivier in the United States. Divorced from his second wife in 1939, during his time in Hollywood, Gabin began a torrid romance with actress Marlene Dietrich. However, his films in America proved less than successful.

A difficult personality, he did serious damage to his Hollywood career while working for RKO Pictures. Scheduled to star in an RKO film, at the last minute he demanded Dietrich be given the co-starring role. The studio refused. After Gabin remained steadfast in his demand, he was fired, and the film project was shelved.

Undaunted, Jean Gabin joined General Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces and earned the Médaille militaire and a Croix de guerre for his wartime valor fighting with the Allies in North Africa. Following D-Day, Gabin was part of the military contingent that entered a liberated Paris.

In 1946, Gabin was hired by Marcel Carné to star in the film, Les Portes de la Nuit, but his conduct got him fired again. He then found a French producer and director willing to cast him and Marlene Dietrich together, but their film Martin Roumagnac was not a success and their personal relationship soon ended. Following another box office failure in 1947, Gabin returned to the stage, but there too, the production was another financial disaster. Nevertheless, he was cast in the lead role of the 1949 René Clément film Au-Delà Des Grilles that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Despite this recognition, the film did not do well at the French box office, and the next five years brought little more than repeated box office failures.

Gabin and Jacques Prévert in 1961.

Gabin's career seemed headed for oblivion. However, he made a comeback in the 1954 film, Touchez pas au grisbi (Don't Touch the Loot). Directed by Jacques Becker, his performance earned him critical acclaim, and the film was a very profitable international success. Later, he worked once again with Jean Renoir in French Cancan, with María Félix and Françoise Arnoul. Over the next twenty years, Gabin made close to 50 more films, most of them very successful commercially and critically, including many for Gafer Films, his production partnership with fellow actor Fernandel.

His co-stars included leading figures of post-war cinema such as Brigitte Bardot (En cas de malheur), Alain Delon (Le Clan des Siciliens, Mélodie en sous-sol and Deux hommes dans la ville), Jean-Paul Belmondo (Un singe en hiver) and Louis de Funès (Le Tatoué).

Gabin died of leukaemia at the American Hospital of Paris, in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. His body was cremated and with full military honours, his ashes were dispersed into the sea from a military ship.

Considered one of the great stars of French cinema, he was made a member of the Légion d'honneur. The Musée Jean Gabin in his native town, Mériel, contains his story and features, his war and film memorabilia.

Selected filmography[link]

• 1930: Ohé! les valises
• 1930: On demande un dompteur or Les lions
• 1930: Méphisto (by Henri Debain and Georges Vinter)
• 1930: Chacun sa chance
• 1933: Du haut en bas
• 1934: Maria Chapdelaine
• 1934: Zouzou
• 1935: Golgotha (by Julien Duvivier)
• 1935: La Bandera
• 1936: The Lower Depths (Les Bas-fonds)
• 1936: La belle équipe
• 1937: Pépé le Moko
• 1937: The Grand Illusion (La Grande illusion)
• 1937: Le Messager
• 1937: Gueule d'amour
• 1938: Le Récif de corail
• 1938: Port of Shadows (Le quai des brumes)
• 1938: The Human Beast (La Bête humaine) (by Jean Renoir)
• 1939: Le Jour se lève (Daybreak) (by Marcel Carné)
• 1941: Remorques
• 1942: Moontide
• 1946: Martin Roumagnac (The Room Upstairs) (by Georges Lacombe)
• 1949: The Walls of Malapaga (Italian: Le mura di Malapaga, French: Au-delà des grilles) (by René Clément)
• 1951: His Last Twelve Hours
• 1952: La Vérité sur Bébé Donge
• 1952: Le Plaisir (by Max Ophüls)
• 1952: La Minute de vérité
• 1954: Touchez pas au grisbi (Don't Touch the Loot) (by Jacques Becker)
• 1954: Razzia sur la chnouf (Razzia in Paris) (by Henri Decoin)
• 1955: Napoléon (bu Sacha Guitry)
• 1955: French Cancan (by Jean Renoir)
• 1956: Des gens sans importance
• 1956: Voici le temps des assassins (by Julien Duvivier)
• 1956: La Traversée de Paris
• 1958: Maigret Sets a Trap
• 1958: Les Misérables
• 1959: Archimède le clochard (The Magnificent Tramp) (by Gilles Grangier) - won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 9th Berlin International Film Festival^[1]
• 1960: Le Président (by Henri Verneuil)
• 1960: Le baron de l'écluse (Le baron Jérôme, Napoléon Antoine) (by Jean Delannoy)
• 1961: Le cave se rebiffe (The Counterfeiters of Paris) (by Gilles Grangier)
• 1962: Un singe en hiver (by Henri Verneuil) with Jean-Paul Belmondo
• 1962: Le Gentleman d'Epsom (by Gilles Grangier)
• 1963: Mélodie en sous-sol (by Henri Verneuil)
• 1963: Maigret voit rouge (by Gilles Grangier)
• 1964: Monsieur (by Jean-Paul Le Chanois)
• 1964: L'Âge ingrat (by Gilles Grangier)
• 1965: Le Tonnerre de Dieu (by Denys de La Patellière)
• 1965: Du rififi à Paname (by Denys de La Patellière)
• 1966: Le Jardinier d'Argenteuil (by Jean-Paul Le Chanois)
• 1967: Le Soleil des voyous (by Jean Delannoy) with Robert Stack
• 1968: Le Pacha (by Georges Lautner)
• 1968: Le tatoué (by Denys de La Patellière)
• 1969: Sous le signe du taureau (by Gilles Grangier)
• 1969: Le Clan des Siciliens (by Henri Verneuil) with Alain Delon
• 1970: La Horse (by Pierre Granier-Deferre) - Auguste Maroilleur
• 1971: Le Chat - Julien Bouin - won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 21st Berlin International Film Festival^[2]
• 1971: Le Drapeau noir flotte sur la marmite - Victor Ploubaz
• 1972: Le Tueur - Commissaire Le Guen
• 1973: L'Affaire Dominici - Gaston Dominici
• 1973: Deux hommes dans la ville - Germain Cazeneuve
• 1974: Verdict - Leguen
• 1976: Échos de plateau
• 1976: L'Année sainte - Max Lambert

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jean Gabin

• Jean Gabin at the Internet Movie Database
• Jean Gabin at AllRovi
• Jean Gabin at Yahoo! Movies
• The Jean Gabin Museum of Mériel
• website in italian language

v t e Cinema of France Actors Directors Cinematographers Editors Films A-Z Producers Score composers Screenwriters Film festivals Films by year: 1892–1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Émile Zola
Born	Émile François Zola (1840-04-02)2 April 1840 Paris, France
Died	29 September 1902(1902-09-29) (aged 62) Paris, France
Occupation	Novelist, playwright, journalist
Nationality	French
Genres	Naturalism
Notable work(s)	Les Rougon-Macquart, Thérèse Raquin
Influences Honoré de Balzac, Claude Bernard, Charles Darwin, Jules Michelet, Hippolyte Taine
Influenced George Orwell, Tom Wolfe, naturalist literature, Jan ten Brink, Anton Chekhov
Signature

Émile François Zola (French pronunciation: [e.mil zɔ.la]; 2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902)^[1] was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'Accuse.

Early life[link]

Zola was born in Paris in 1840. His father, François Zola (originally Francesco Zolla), was an Italian engineer. With his French wife Émilie Aurélie Aubert, the family moved to Aix-en-Provence in the southeast, when Émile was three years old. Four years later in 1847, his father died leaving his mother on a meager pension. In 1858 the Zolas moved to Paris, where Émile's childhood friend Paul Cézanne soon joined him. Zola started to write in the romantic style. His widowed mother had planned a law career for Émile but he failed his Baccalauréat examination.

Before his breakthrough as a writer, Zola worked as a clerk in a shipping firm and then in the sales department for a publisher (Hachette). He also wrote literary and art reviews for newspapers. As a political journalist, Zola did not hide his dislike of Napoleon III, who had successfully run for the office of President under the constitution of the French Second Republic, only to misuse this position as a springboard for the coup d'état that made him emperor.

Career[link]

Zola early in his career.

Paul Cézanne, Paul Alexis reading to Emile Zola, 1869-1870, São Paulo Museum of Art

During his early years, Émile Zola wrote several short stories and essays, four plays and three novels. Among his early books was Contes à Ninon, published in 1864. With the publication of his sordid autobiographical novel La Confession de Claude (1865) attracting police attention, Hachette fired him. His novel Les Mystères de Marseille appeared as a serial in 1867.

After his first major novel, Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola started the series called Les Rougon Macquart, about a family under the Second Empire. In Paris Zola maintained his friendship with Cézanne who painted a portrait of him with another friend from Aix-en-Provence writer Paul Alexis entitled Paul Alexis reading to Zola.

Literary output[link]

More than half of Zola's novels were part of this set of 20 collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the start at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution. The series examines two branches of a family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts for five generations.

As he described his plans for the series, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world."

Although Zola and Cézanne were friends from childhood, they broke in later life over Zola's fictionalized depiction of Cézanne and the Bohemian life of painters in his novel L'Œuvre (The Masterpiece, 1886).

From 1877 with the publication of l'Assommoir, Émile Zola became wealthy; he was better paid than Victor Hugo, for example. He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organized cultural dinners with Guy de Maupassant, Joris-Karl Huysmans and other writers at his luxurious villa in Medan near Paris after 1880. Germinal in 1885, then the three 'cities', Lourdes in 1894, Rome in 1896 and Paris in 1897, established Zola as a successful author.

The self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola's works inspired operas such as those of Gustave Charpentier, notably Louise in the 1890s. His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity (Claude Bernard), social Manicheanism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert.

The Dreyfus affair[link]

Front page cover of the newspaper L’Aurore for Thursday 13 January 1898, with the letter J’Accuse...!, written by Émile Zola about the Dreyfus affair. The headline reads "I accuse...! Letter to the President of the Republic".

Captain Alfred Dreyfus was a Jewish artillery officer in the French army. When the French intelligence found information about someone giving the German embassy military secrets, anti-semitism seems to have caused senior officers to suspect Dreyfus, though there was no direct evidence of any wrongdoing. Dreyfus was court-martialled, convicted of treason and sent to Devil's Island in French Guiana.

Lt. Col. Georges Picquart came across evidence that implicated another officer, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy and informed his superiors. Rather than move to clear Dreyfus, the decision was made to protect Esterhazy and ensure the original verdict was not overturned. Major Hubert-Joseph Henry forged documents that made it seem that Dreyfus was guilty and then had Picquart assigned to duty in Africa. Before leaving, Picquart told some of Dreyfus's supporters what he knew. Soon Senator August Scheurer-Kestner took up the case and announced in the Senate that Dreyfus was innocent and accused Esterhazy. The right-wing government refused new evidence to be allowed and Esterhazy was tried and acquitted. Picquart was then sentenced to 60 days in prison.

Émile Zola risked his career and more on 13 January 1898, when his "J'accuse",^[2] was published on the front page of the Paris daily L'Aurore. The newspaper was run by Ernest Vaughan and Georges Clemenceau, who decided that the controversial story would be in the form of an open letter to the President, Félix Faure. Émile Zola's "J'Accuse" accused the highest levels of the French Army of obstruction of justice and antisemitism by having wrongfully convicted Alfred Dreyfus to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. Zola's intention was that he be prosecuted for libel so that the new evidence in support of Dreyfus would be made public.^[3] The case, known as the Dreyfus affair, divided France deeply between the reactionary army and church and the more liberal commercial society. The ramifications continued for many years; on the 100th anniversary of Zola's article, France's Roman Catholic daily paper, La Croix, apologized for its antisemitic editorials during the Dreyfus Affair. As Zola was a leading French thinker, his letter formed a major turning-point in the affair.

Zola was brought to trial for criminal libel on 7 February 1898 and was convicted on 23 February and removed from the Legion of Honor. Rather than go to jail, Zola fled to England. Without even having had the time to pack a few clothes, he arrived at Victoria Station on 19 July. After his brief and unhappy residence in London, from October 1898 to June 1899, he was allowed to return in time to see the government fall.

The government offered Dreyfus a pardon (rather than exoneration), which he could accept and go free and so admit that he was guilty or face a re-trial in which he was sure to be convicted again. Although he was clearly not guilty, he chose to accept the pardon. Zola said, "The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it."^[4] In 1906, Dreyfus was completely exonerated by the Supreme Court.

The 1898 article by Émile Zola is widely marked in France as the most prominent manifestation of the new power of the intellectuals (writers, artists, academicians) in shaping public opinion, the media and the state.

Death[link]

Gravestone of Émile Zola at cimetière Montmartre; his remains are now interred in the Panthéon.

Zola died of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a stopped chimney on the 29th of September 1902. He was 62 years old. His funeral on 5 October was attended by thousands, according to the New York Times at the time. Captain Dreyfus initially had promised not to attend the funeral but was given permission by Mme Zola and attended.^[5][6]

His enemies were blamed for his death because of previous attempts on his life but nothing could be proved. (Decades later, a Parisian roofer claimed on his deathbed to have closed the chimney for political reasons).^[7] Addresses of sympathy arrived from all parts of France; for a week the vestibule of his house was crowded with notable writers, scientists, artists and politicians, who came to inscribe their names in the registers. On the other hand, Zola's enemies used the opportunity to celebrate in malicious glee.^[8] Thus, Henri Rochefort wrote a piece in "L'Intransigeant", claiming Zola had committed suicide, having discovered Dreyfus to be in fact guilty. Zola was initially buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris but on 4 June 1908, almost six years after his death, his remains were moved to the Panthéon, where he shares a crypt with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.^[9]

Scope of the Rougon-Macquart series[link]

Zola’s 20 Rougon-Macquart novels are a panoramic account of the Second French Empire. They are the story of a family principally between the years 1851 and 1871. These 20 novels contain over 300 major characters, who descend from the two family lines of the Rougons and Macquarts and who are related. In Zola’s words, which are the subtitle of the Rougon-Macquart series, they are "L’Histoire naturelle et sociale d’une famille sous le Second Empire"("The natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire").

Most of the Rougon-Macquart novels were written during the French Third Republic. To an extent, attitudes and value judgments may have been superimposed on that picture with the wisdom of hindsight. The débâcle in which the reign of Napoleon III of France culminated may have imparted a note of decadence to certain of the novels about France in the years before that disastrous defeat. Nowhere is the doom laden image of the Second Empire so clearly seen as in Nana, which culminates in echoes of the Franco-Prussian War (and hence by implication of the French defeat). Even in novels dealing with earlier periods of Napoleon III’s reign the picture of the Second Empire is sometimes overlaid with the imagery of catastrophe.

In the Rougon-Macquart novels, provincial life tends to be overshadowed by Zola’s preoccupation with the capital. Only in his picture of rural working-class life in La Terre and in the corresponding picture of industrial working-class life in Germinal, does Zola convincingly escape from Paris into the provinces. The life of provincial towns is an even more noticeable omission from his achievement, for only in Le Rêve and in the twice repeated picture of Plassans (modeled upon his childhood home, Aix-en-Provence) does he achieve such a portrait (La Fortune des Rougon, La Conquête de Plassans). Le Docteur Pascal has the same setting but cannot properly be termed a novel of provincial life. La Débâcle, the military novel is set for the most part in country districts of eastern France; its dénouement takes place in the capital during the civil war leading to the suppression of the Paris Commune. Like Balzac, Zola’s imagination was roused by Paris and all that the capital represented to him.

Quasi-scientific purpose[link]

In Le Roman expérimental and Les Romanciers naturalistes Zola expounded the purposes of the 'Naturalist' novel. The experimental novel was to serve as a vehicle for scientific experiment, analogous to the experiments conducted by Claude Bernard and expounded by him in Introduction à la médecine expérimentale. Claude Bernard’s experiments were in the field of clinical physiology, those of the Naturalist writers (Zola being their leader) would be in the realm of psychology. Balzac, Zola claimed had already investigated the psychology of lechery in an experimental manner, in the figure of Hector Hulot in La Cousine Bette. Essential to Zola’s concept of the experimental novel was dispassionate observation of the world, with all that it involved by way of meticulous documentation. Each novel should be based upon a dossier. With this object in view he visited the colliery of Anzin in northern France, in February 1884 when a strike was on; he visited La Beauce (for La Terre), Sedan, Ardennes (for La Débâcle) and travelled on the railway line between Paris and Le Havre (when researching La Bête humaine). Zola sometimes professed his awareness that the work of any creative artist must by its very nature be subjective.

Characterization[link]

Édouard Manet, Portrait of Émile Zola, 1868, Musée d'Orsay

For a writer who so strongly asserted the claim of Naturalist literature to be an experimental analysis of human psychology, Zola has seemed to many critics like György Lukács,^[10] to be strangely deficient in the power of creating life-like and memorable characters. These critics admit his ability to evoke powerful and moving crowd scenes but argue that he lacked the ability to create memorable characters, in the manner of Honoré de Balzac or Charles Dickens and the ability to make his characters true to life. It was important to Zola that no character should appear larger than life;^[11] but the criticism that Zola’s characters are cardboard, is a substantially more damaging one which in view of the characterization of Gervaise Macquart (L'Assommoir), Nana Coupeau (Nana), Jacques Lantier (La Bête humaine), Serge Mouret (La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret), Jean Macquart (La Terre) and Pascal Rougon (Le Docteur Pascal), may seriously be doubted. Zola, by refusing to make any of his characters larger than life (if that is what he has indeed done), did not inhibit himself from also achieving verisimilitude.

Although Zola would not accept that it was either scientifically or artistically justifiable to create larger-than-life characters, his work does present a number of larger-than-life symbols which, like the mine Le Voreux in Germinal, take on the nature of a surrogate human life. The mine, the still in L'Assommoir and the locomotive La Lison in La Bête humaine impress the reader with the vivid reality of human beings. The great natural processes of seedtime and harvest, death and renewal in La Terre are instinct with a vitality which is not human but is the elemental energy of life.^[12] Human life is raised to the level of the mythical as the hammerblows of Titans are seemingly heard underground at Le Voreux or in La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret, the walled park of Le Paradou encloses a re-enactment – and restatement – of the myth of the Book of Genesis. This is the visionary aspect of the Rougon-Macquart series.

Zola’s optimism[link]

In Zola there is the theorist and the imaginative writer, the poet, the scientist and the optimist.

The poet is the artist in words whose writing, as in the racecourse scene in Nana or in the descriptions of the laundry in L'Assommoir or in many passages of La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret, Le Ventre de Paris and La Curée, vies with the colourful impressionistic techniques of Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The scientist is the believer in some measure of scientific determinism – not that this, despite his own words “dépourvus de libre arbitre”,^[13] need always amount to a philosophical denial of free will. The creator of “la littérature putride”, a term of abuse invented by an early critic of Thérèse Raquin (a novel which predates Les Rougon-Macquart series), emphasizes the squalid aspects of the human environment and upon the seamy side of human nature.^[14]

The optimist is that other face of the scientific experimenter, the man with an unshakable belief in human progress. Zola bases his optimism on innéité and on the supposed capacity of the human race to make progress in a moral sense. Innéité is defined by Zola as that process in which “se confondent les caractères physiques et moraux des parents, sans que rien d'eux semble s’y retrouver”;^[15] it is the term used in biology to describe the process whereby the moral and temperamental dispositions of some individuals are unaffected by the hereditary transmission of genetic characteristics. Jean Macquart and Pascal Rougon are two instances of individuals liberated from the blemishes of their ancestors by the operation of the process of innéité.

Evident in Le Docteur Pascal, and again in Fécondité (which is not part of the Rougon-Macquart series), is Zola's conviction that as scientific research makes progress step by step and from generation to generation, so by slow degrees but in a similarly steadfast manner the moral progress of the human race will be achieved as the environmental faults of particular societies are swept away, as (through innéité) the hereditary failings of particular families are overcome and as on a universal scale – in novels beyond the framework of the Rougon-Macquart series – humanity unites in brotherhood.

Bibliography[link]

See also[link]

• The Life of Émile Zola (1937)
• J'accuse (letter)
• Naturalism (literature)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Borie, Jean (1971) (in French). Zola et les mythes: ou, de la nausée au salut. Pierres vives. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. OCLC 299742040. 
• Brown, Frederick (1995). Zola: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-29742-8. OCLC 31044880. 
• Ellis, Havelock (1898). "Zola". Affirmations. London: Walter Scott. pp. 131–157. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?seq=173&view=image&size=100&id=uc2.ark:/13960/t9q242r53&u=1&num=131. 
• Hemmings, F.W.J. (1966). Émile Zola. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC 3383139. 
• Lukács, György (1950). Studies in European Realism: A Sociological Survey of the Writings of Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, Tolstoy, Gorki and Others. Translated by Edith Bonee; foreword by Roy Pascal. London: Hillway Publishing. OCLC 2463154. 
• Mitterand, Henri (1986) (in French). Zola et le naturalisme [Zola and Naturalism]. Que sais-je?. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2-13-039642-0. OCLC 15289843. 
• Mitterand, Henri (1999) (in French). Zola. Paris: Fayard. ISBN 978-2-213-60083-3. OCLC 659987814. 
• Newton, Joy (1967). "Émile Zola: impressionniste" (in French). Cahiers naturalistes. 33. pp. 39–52. 
• Newton, Joy (1967) (in French). Cahiers naturalistes. 34. pp. 124–38. 
• Wilson, Angus (1952). Émile Zola: An Introductory Study of His Novels. London: Secker and Warburg. OCLC 818448. 

External links[link]

Find more about Émile Zola on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Dreyfus Rehabilitated
• Émile Zola at InterText Digital Library (French)
• Émile Zola at Livres & Ebooks (French)
• Émile Zola exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Livres audio gratuits pour Emile Zola (French)
• Woehr, Jack J. (2004) "The Rougon-Macquart Novels of Emile Zola (for English-speaking Readers)" http://www.well.com/user/jax/literature/Rougon-Macquart.html. Retrieved 28 January 2011 
• Works about Émile Zola at the Internet Archive
• Works by Émile Zola on Open Library at the Internet Archive
• Works by Émile Zola at Project Gutenberg

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