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Jean Renoir on Actors and Audiences
From: Columbia University
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Columbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
If he could have put one sentence on the marquee for his movies, French director Jean Renoir said, he would have written "Children only." He discusses his conception of his audiences and talks about his favorite actors, in this interview conducted in 1960, with Columbia University's Oral History Research Office. |
Jean Renoir on his connection to actors and his feelings about audiences.
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Question: You have worked with some of the finest actors in the film industry, both American and French. Can you select your actors? |
Jean Renoir: My relationships with actors are good, even excellent, for one reason--I'm a frustrated actor. To me, to be an actor is a wonderful thing, and I love to act, and sometimes in my pictures I act myself, but I act very badly. I'm a bad actor. I'm a ham. The producer asked me, begged me, not to act. If I could, I would be an actor, but I cannot. That's why I love actors and I get along very well with them. |
 Now, very often people ask me the difference between American and French actors. I would say that there is no difference, an actor is an actor. You know, to feel that there are differences between Hollywood and Paris, between an American actor and a French actor, would be against my conception of the world, because all my policy, all my behavior is based on what I told you: we are in the beginning of the new Middle Ages, and the division among nations is finished. I mean, within the Western world. To me the world is no more divided vertically with barriers. The world is divided horizontally. You see what I mean? You have the world, or the nation, of the artist, and then you have the nation of the farmers; you have the nation of the businesspeople. |
May I tell you something? There is more connection between a businessman from Shanghai and a businessman from New York than between a farmer from Shanghai and a businessman from Shanghai. You understand what I mean about this division of the world? Today, if you talk to a French farmer--well, believe me, the conversation will be very much the same as the conversation with a farmer in Ohio. Very much. But if you talk to an American artist and to an American banker, you will find two citizens of two different nations. |
Q: You worked with M. Louis Jouvet? |
Renoir: I worked with Louis Jouvet--of course I did. I can say nothing about Louis Jouvet. He was a fantastic actor. As a matter of fact, I never directed the actors. I'm not a director. As I told you, I'm a storyteller. I just manage to convince the actors to play in a certain way. But the physical means, the physical devices--that's up to them. |
You know, you have one way of directing which is the normal way. The director says, "Look at me, I will act the scene." If he directs a girl, he will pantomime a love scene with the boy, taking a high voice to imitate the girl. And then he says, "You saw me? Now you do just the same." |
That's ridiculous, because the most important thing in the world is respect for human beings. Well, if you respect human beings, try to respect the personality of your actors, and try to help them to find their own personality, and not to force them to adopt your own personality. You understand what I mean? |
Q: This works with a great actor like Louis Jouvet and a young person without much experience? |
Renoir: It is the same thing. You know, either you are an actor or you are a nonactor. If you have a nonactor who chooses to insist--well, you try to get along with tricks with the nonactor in order to finish your picture and not to have a catastrophe, and not to hurt the feeling of the poor creature who believes he is an actor. But you know, that's a little trick on the side. But let's suppose that you work under ideal conditions--I mean, with actors. In this case, allow them to do the job as actors. |
Q: Mr. Zachary Scott said you were a great pleasure to work with. |
 Renoir: Well, I am happy with that, because it was exactly the same thing on my side. I loved to work with him. As a matter of fact, since The Southerner was finished, I tried very often to work again with Zachary, but you know this world is very strange. It seems that you meet each other by chance and you never find again a way to work together. I'm sorry for Zach and for me, and more for me. |
Q: In closing--when an audience comes out of a theater after seeing a picture, what do you suppose they should bring with them? |
Renoir: Well, I cannot talk about general audiences, because I do not know them, but I can talk a little bit about the audiences of my pictures, because of course their gaze is terrifying for me, as for any author. I try to understand even more. Well, in my case, something happens, very often. It is that, one, I have basically one audience in the world, people under 20, kids. You know, very often I have insisted to my producers to put a sentence on the marquee so the film could be forbidden to people who are more than 20. How you say in English? Adults only? I would say: "Children only." |
No, really, my audience is young. Now, there are a few old people who also like my pictures, but when they grow up and are sophisticated and look for reasons, I am not as lucky with them as with the very young ones. |
For instance, my last picture in France, before the picture starts in the different movie theaters in big cities, I ask to show the picture to the university pupils, and it was a great success. It was also successful in the theaters, but no comparison. |
Now, I have also another opinion about audiences. It is that a picture must not be the work only of an author or of actors or technicians; it must be also the work of the audience. The audience makes the picture, as well as the authors; and it seems to be strange, because you could ask me how the audience can make a picture which is already shot, done, printed. |
Well, a picture is different with every type of audience, and if you have a good audience, the picture is better. It is a mystery, but we are surrounded by mysteries. |
I must tell you something--I don't believe in science. The only part of science I believe in is the statement of Mr. Einstein that everything is relative. And since I don't believe in science, I believe very much in mysteries--like for instance an audience can help to make a picture which is already finished. I have nothing against that. I believe it. |
Q: I should think if you felt that way that you would have gone into producing plays instead of pictures. |
Renoir: You are right, and that's what I am starting to do now. I wrote two plays, and I have a third one in preparation, and I wrote an adaptation of a play by my good friend Clifford Odets, "The Big Knife," that was shown in Paris very successfully. I am an enormous fan. What I like about the stage, it is full of surprise. When my first play was presented in Paris, and Leslie Caron played the lead in the play, it was in a very charming theater, the Renaissance. But you feel that everything is so intimate, compared to the movies, that you feel like taking the box of the man that's selling popcorn during the intermission and selling popcorn yourself to the people, just to help a little bit. |
Q: Have you worked closely with the cameraman? I should think you'd be fascinated by the possibilities of the camera. |
Renoir: I always worked closely with cameramen, and more now, because now I just invented a new system of shooting pictures. On my last pictures I shot them, one with eight cameras together, and the other one with five cameras. And I must tell you something--when you have five cameras, you cannot hang a viewfinder for each camera, and the cameramen are the bosses. That means they must cooperate with the whole story, with you, be a part of the screenplay and be a part of the picture. |
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