Jean Renoir: Projections of Paradise

Jean Renoir (1894-1979), a ceramicist turned filmmaker, married Catherine Hessling--the vivacious model who had cared for his ailing father, Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir--and made her the star of his films. In this impressive critical biography, written with the cooperation of the director's son Alain, Catherine is portrayed as an unloving, vengeful, sexually cold mate who hated being a mother. This revealing portrait traces Renoir's support of the French Communist Party, his escape from Nazi-occupied France in 1940 with Dido Freire, who became his second wife, his trying years in Hollywood, where he was treated as a novice or a spoiled brat, and his return to France and his cultural roots. Bergan, coauthor of Faber Companion to Foreign Films , deftly illuminates Renoir's fluent, compassionate, poetic naturalism. Photos. (Aug.)