PM Review

  The first thing I have noticed in Renoir's first American production in Swamp Water (1941) is its simultaneous presence of the studio shooting ( the background sky when Ben was going to swamp for searching his dog and kissed Mabel), location shooting ( the real swamp area in Georgia) and the build-build-up areas (probably the police station and Juli's shambled house ). After watching Akira's shooting areas, this swamp gives a more American aura than European milieu. It's probably the first film where I have watched the wilderness based narrative . As usual Renoir cinemas held a humanistic and philosophical attention to reality. In Swamp Water it's about establishing the justice thru truth finding and a strong familial bonding to keep close to each other. Swamp Water (1941)  Jean Renoir English, USA

"You see, in this world, there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons” - Octave as Jean Renoir As Renoir’s The Grand Illusion [1937] ends with the uncertainty of WWI, The Rules of the Game [1939] begins with the certainty of WWII. Like settings, the themes of class disintegration, tragic-romance, multilingual situations are very close to the prior one. The long and chaotic hunting scenes in the wood are the sure symbolic predictions of futile wars of the imperials is so prophetic in the film. I have seen the same stands of prophecy in Charlie Chaplin & Sergei Eisenstein films previously. Collage: Juliette Binoche [Left] & Nora Gregor [Right] One thing I have noticed which has given me a longstanding impression on my mind is that Christine’s knowledge and learning on colonial history of America and sculptural and artistic collection of Ch...

When I started to read French filmmaker Jean Renoir’s autobiography "My Life and My Films" [1974] and I was stuck at the line “In my view cinema is nothing but a new form of painting- another form of the total transformation of the world through knowledge” in the forward. I have fallen free in the nadir of nostalgia and recalled an incident. In my orientation class for cinematography certificate course in Pathshala South Asian Media Institute back in January 2015, my course instructor asked for all what is cinematography, broadly speaking, what the cinema is? I was astonished as well as confident that I knew what to say in response. I said boastfully cinema is a third eye; an eye to see the world what others don’t say.  I have also posted a statement in Bengali,  তৃতীয়   নয়নে   অন্য   জীবন   দেখার   শুভারম্ভ ...... [The beginning of seeing the other lives through the third eye] with three pictures of Gordon Wills, the cinematic collaborator of Woody Al...

  The assembly of multi ethnic & religious people in the tumultuous time of great wars; the difficulties of verbal communications in the midst of various languages; the adversity and hardship in the desertion and escapement attempts in the life as a POW; overall, the unilateral suffering and futile purposes of wars are the concerns I have been researching for the literary and artistic documents and references of the situations in the Mesopotamian campaign [1914-1918]. I have already listed some references but I haven’t thought I will come across one of the finest artistic representations that has been expressed well in Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion [1937] where I have found all of them in a single cinema. I am instantly enchanted by its pacifist and humanistic attitudes. Very few cinemas showed the unconventional friendship between  Boëldieu [French aviator] & Rauffenstein  [German aviator] like Frantz [German soldier] & Adrien [French soldier] in Frantz [2...