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Those who’ve read this blog before (and you know who you are!) will know that I’ve made a case for Jean Renoir being perhaps the greatest director of all time. As Peter Bogdanovich has noted, during the 1930s he made a virtually unprecedented string of masterpieces, including Grand Illusion, La Bête Humaine and The Rules of the Game.

Here’s a clip from one of those films, Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), that illustrates some of Renoir’s genius. It’s a tracking shot through the halls of a typical Paris apartment of the period. The maid leaves the table of her employers, pauses in the intermediate hall, then reappears doubly-framed in the kitchen window. The camera glides over and between these spaces, emphasizing the differences in social class — a major theme of the film — as the maid moves from living spaces to hallway to kitchen, from the realm of her employers to her own domain. At the end of the track, the camera pushes in, and then a reverse shot brings us into the maid’s point of view. Notice the deep focus Renoir helped pioneer, and the use of frames within frames to suggest enclosure and confinement; in Renoir’s world, even the bourgeoisie are trapped in their own milieu.

Enjoy!

(Unlike many of Renoir’s 1930s masterpieces, Boudu is available on DVD in a fine Criterion Collection edition.)

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