Jean Renoir - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Renoir was born in the Montmartre district of Paris, France. He was the second son of Aline (née Charigot) and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. His elder brother was Pierre Renoir, a noted French stage and film actor, while his younger brother Claude Renoir (1901-69) produced some of his films. Renoir was also the uncle of Claude Renoir (1913/14-93), the son of Pierre, a cinematographer who worked with Renoir on several of his films. Renoir's son Alain Renoir, was a professor of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley and a scholar of medieval English literature.

As a child, Renoir moved to the south of France with his family. 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, from which, as he later wrote, he continually ran away.

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. 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. 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.

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