Post 2: Impressionism and cinema

  Impressionism and French Impressionist cinema:

Jean Epstein, Coeur Fidèle, 1923
Coeur Fidèle (Faithful Heart) film

         Impressionism entered the public sphere in the 1870s, in a fast-changing social and economic era. Artists were adopting technical innovations, rebelling against the old norms by experimenting with new subject matters, and new ways of presenting them. 

Movies arrived in the mid-1890s with the Brothers Lumiere projecting Exiting the Lyon Factory and the Arrival of the train in La Ciotat around France. At first (is it the case with any new art form?), the focus was on narrative. It took some decades for cinematography to be less dependent on stories and explore its own tools to distort reality into an original perception. 

That happened in the 1920s (again in France) with a group of authors who created French Impressionist cinema (1918-1929). The Impressionist cinema was localized in France, while the other avant-garde film movements like Dada and Surrealism were more international. Jean Renoir, one of the French Impressionist film directors and son of Pierre-August Renoir (yeap, one of the founding fathers of Impressionism), said: " La cinematographie est très en retard sur la peinture. Ce que l'on a fait en peinture, on l'a fait au cinéma cinqante ans plus tard." (Cinematography is very much behind painting. What we did in painting, we did that in cinematography fifty years later). He was talking about the Impressionists in the 1870s. 

Furthermore, in his interview, Jean Renoir on The Secrets of Films (from 3:40), he draws the parallel between the power of Cezanne's apples with the power of the actors' close-up. For Cézanne, to catch the very nature and inner characteristics of the apple, he had to become that apple, Jean says. Similarly, he says, the biggest power of cinema is the grand plan (close-up) of the actor's face on the screen, when we see the inner them and we become them. It must be said, that Cézanne is today known as a Post-Impressionist, whose art grew from  Impressionism.

Still Life with Apples and a Glass of Wine, 1877-9
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
26.7 x 32.7 cm, oil on canvas
Still Life with Apples and a Glass of Wine (philamuseum.org)

Similarities in the approach of the Impressionist cinema directors and painters make it easier to understand what both groups were aiming for. Impressionist filmmakers, like painters, were all individually authentic and different in their expression, therefore, it was difficult for film critics to see and call them a unified movement. However, all impressionist directors were dedicated to using cameras, light, editing, and other tools to create sensations and not just a narrative. In the same way, Impressionist painters were scientifically approaching color, innovatively using their brushes, and getting out of their studios to find true light effects in conveying their impressions. As painters tried to escape the rigid rules of the Paris Salon, the filmmakers in the 1920s in France were trying to put aesthetics ahead of the story, rebelling against Hollywood's rules. 

The best-known filmmakers from the French Impressionist group are: Abel Gance (La Dixième symphonie, 1918, J’Accuse, 1919, La Roue, 1922, Napoléon, 1927); Jean Epstein (Coeur fidèle, 1923, Six et demi onze, 1927, La Glace à Trois Face, 1928, The Fall of the House of Usher, 1928); Germaine Dulac (The Smiling Madame Beudet, 1922); Marcel L'Herbier (El Dorado, 1921); Louis Delluc – (La Femme de nulle part, 1922); Jean Renoir (Nana, 1926)

Five years ago, there was an exhibition in Musée d'Orsay Renoir Father and Son. Painting and Cinema which showed side by side the works of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) painter and his son Jean Renoir (1894-1979) cinematographer. Jean's film "A Day in the Country"(1936) could be perceived as the closest to his father's aesthetic of sunny fleeting moments in nature enjoyed by women, children, and men. 

A scene On the Swing, movie Partie de Campagne 

La Balançoire, 1876
August Pierre Renoir 
Oil on canvas
92 x 73 cm
Musée d'Orsay Renoir

Quoting the author in the L'Oeil article (January 2019): "However, A Day in the Country is no mere tableau vivant. The film does not make Jean Renoir the 'Impressionist' plein air director (he actually favored studio shoots). Exploiting and experimenting with all the resources offered by this relatively new filmic medium (shots, editing, music), the director casts off the shackles of pictorial and literally models to tell a story of 'thwarted love' on his own terms, with a deceptively light touch and deep sensitivity." This again helps us understand what made the Impressionists the pioneers of modern art: insistence on individual expression, challenging the established etalons, and engaging the viewer.

Both father and son later in their careers tried to combine the 'established' and 'modern' rules. Renoir the painter in his later years redirected his art towards the Italian Great Masters portraying nudes more traditionally and in unspecified space or time. The Great Bathers painting and Les Baigneuses are examples of his detachment from Impressionism.

The Great Bathers,1884-7
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Oil on canvas
117.5 x 171 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Les Baigneuses, 1918-19
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Huile sur toile
110 x 160 cm
Les Baigneuses - Auguste Renoir | Musée d'Orsay (musee-orsay.fr)

Renoir the filmmaker had to work in Hollywood during the Second World War, but mixing the artistic and commercial approach to the movies didn't work out for either side. He said: " My problem with Hollywood was always the same, that the job I am trying to achieve has nothing to do with the purely industrial side of the film". The movies he will be remembered by, among others are La Grande Illusion (1937), The Lower Depths (1936), and La Bête Humaine (1938), The River (1951). He was highly recognized during his lifetime (Academy Award for Life Achievement being one of many awards) and named as a great influence by many of his peers to this day, like Akira Kurosawa, Orson Wells, Martin Scorsese, François Truffaut, Mike Leigh, and Wes Anderson.  

Sources: 

Book: Belinda Thomson, Impressionism Origin, Practice, Reception (Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2000)
Magazin: L'Oeil Janvier 2019
Web sites:
Renoir Father and Son. Painting and Cinema. | Musée d'Orsay (musee-orsay.fr)
French impressionist cinema - Wikipedia
cineCollage : French Impressionism
Cœur fidèle - Wikipedia
Filmmakers' Autobiographies: Jean Renoir, “My Life And My Films' - Golden Globes