During his career, Jean Renoir made over forty films that spanned from the silent era up until the end of the 1960s. In 2002 he was ranked as the fourth greatest director of all time by the BFI’s Sight & Sound poll of critics. Through his use of naturalism and his focus on class relationships Renoir was able to send political messages/make political points in a very nuanced way. Amongst the numerous honours Renoir accumulated throughout his life, he received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975 for his contribution to the motion picture industry. As one of his hidden gems Le Crime De Monsieur Lange (restored to 4K quality) comes to Blu-ray, DVD and digital download this week, we take a look at Renoir’s greatest on-screen achievements.
1. Boudu Saved From Drowning (Boudu Sauve Des Eaux) | 1932
Directed and written by Renoir, Boudu Saved from Drowning follows the story of a tramp (Boudu) saved by a bourgeois bookseller (Edouard Lestingois) who then decides to transform Boudu into a gentleman. This film captures class relationships in a satirical, comedy of manners kind of way. However, the anti-social behaviour that Boudu’s character shows when Lestingois attempts to turn him into a gentleman caused such outrage amongst the audiences at the time that police were called to several cinemas to restore order.
2. Toni | 1935
Toni was released in 1935 and stars Charles Bavette, Celia Montalvan and Edouard Delmont. This film, both written and directed by Renoir, is one of the first examples of casting non-professional actors to star and using on-location shooting. Both techniques later influenced the Left Bank of the French New Wave movement. As the film follows blossoming romances between a group of immigrants working around a quarry and a farm in Provence, Toni is also considered to be a main influence for the Italian neorealist movement. Although this film is not considered to be one of Renoir’s most popular, it still receives positive reviews from critics.
Men in movies have had their day. Every year, female characters are stronger, smarter, and more badass than ever. Just look at the nerve-shredding thriller Revenge – available for digital download from Friday 7th September and on DVD 1st October – which sees a sexual assault survivor Jen (Matilda Lutz) dish out some blood-and-guts justice.
Jen is the latest in a long line of badass women on screen – a descendent of cinema’s most iconic female characters. Here are 7 of the most badass ever.
A party takes a very dark turn when Jen is sexually assaulted and thrown to her death. But after surviving the fall, Jen seeks the ultimate revenge (and trust us, it’s not for the weak stomached). The film’s masterstroke is setting up her attackers to represent the very worst of masculinity – the abuser, the victim blamer, the man who’s complicit in turning a blind eye – and then has Jen take aim at them one-by-one.
Most Badass Moment: Jen fights her former lover in a shotgun battle for the ages, painting the walls quite literally red with blood.
The Bride (Uma Thurman)
Seen in Kill Bill Parts 1 & 2 (2003 & 2004)
The personification of “hell hath no fury”, wrapped in a Bruce Lee-style tracksuit and handed a samurai sword. Jilted at the altar and left for dead by assassin troupe leader Bill (the film’s title should be a clue about what his punishment will be), The Bride AKA Beatrix Kiddo regains her strength and sets out on a mission of bloody, brilliant revenge.
Most Badass Moment: Annihilating the Crazy 88 singlehandedly in a frenetic, breakneck fight. The Bride’s vengeance is so gory that director Quentin Tarantino had to make some of it black and white to get around censors.
It’s #BRWC10! To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the battleroyalewithcheese blog, here is a retrospective look at the year so far in film. It’s been a year of monstrous blockbuster releases, sleeper hits and surprising failures at the box office.
The year started quiet, as Januarys tend to go. After the craze of the holiday season releases and the rush to get all the “oscarworthy” movies out, there was not much to see in the first month of the year other than the third instalment in the already forgotten Maze Runner series, and yet another film of Liam Neeson being angry and confused on public transportation.
Things finally kicked off in February. There were some well received entries this month, including the superb Annihilation by Alex Garland. However, the clear attention grabber for this month was Black Panther. The first of Marvel’s three entries for the year was a critical and box office success, bringing in 1.3 billion USD for the studios.As the year progressed however, the saturation of these block buster releases would soon fatigue audiences. In between April and May, we saw the release of Avengers:Infinity War , Deadpool 2, Solo: A Star Wars Story. Infinity War was the culmination of 10 years work for Marvel studios (making it only appropriate to talk about during BRWC10). It was a masterfully orchestrated piece of story, bringing in all the best elements of the different franchises under the Marvel umbrella. It was, without surprise, a complete hit with audiences and in the box office. A couple weeks after Deadpool 2 came out.
Deadpool 2 was a good sequel to the first. There was a clear understanding of what worked in the first one as a far as humour and irreverence, and it built up on the set pieces from the first one delivering a truly incredible chase sequence. However the film brought in almost as much in the box office as the first one, which is surprising given the popularity of the franchise. Not long after that, Solo: A Star Wars Story was released.
It has been well documented that Solo has underperformed at the box office. The thing is, the film is good. Alden Ehrenreich delivered a likeable and confident performance as Han Solo. It wasn’t imitation or pastiche of Harrison Ford’s take on the character, but rather a solid portrayal of a young smuggler in the Star Wars universe. His chemistry with Chewbacca and Lando worked terrifically, there were impressive set pieces and some remnants of Lord and Miller’s humour made through the Ron Howard takeover. Yet, not enough people saw it. The film was declared a flop. There were talks of removing Kathleen Kennedy from the helm of Lucasfilm, the plans for the Boba Fett and Obi-Wan movies were put on hold, and the future of Star Wars as a whole was put into question.
All of this showing how Hollywood always learns the wrong lesson. The failure of Solo is not due to the product, or the controversy of recasting the character (which may have affected some ticket sales, but certainly not in the millions). Solo was the first evidence of the blockbuster fatigue that is starting to manifest itself this year. General audience members will not spend £13 (and their other currency counterparts) per viewing on three very similar films within the space of a month. Disney was so confident that there was such a crazy for Star Wars content, that it released this film within a month of it’s biggest event of the last 10 years, as well as the second instalment in a beloved franchise. In addition to this, The Last Jedi, which had just been released in December of the last year, famously received mixed reviews. Yet in light of all of this, studios were still confident they could tap the market beyond the die hard fans and make billion dollar returns several times a year. They could not.
The summer has also been plagued by underperforming and underwhelming blockbusters. Jurassic World 2 received very middling reviews, most people criticising its bland and predictable plot. While it performed well financially, it was clear it was not a movie audiences enjoyed watching and could signify diminishing returns in the future of the franchise. Skyscraper, yet another of Dwayne Johnsons outings, also underperformed at the box office. After a year of massive events, a bland remake of Die Hard was not enough to fill the seats, even if it featured the worlds biggest actor.
The light at the end of this CGI heavy tunnel is the release of Mission Impossible: Fallout. The franchise has gained extremely good graces from audiences. In the midst of all the fabricated imagery of modern day action films, viewers not only love the real stunts offerings of the Tom Cruise helmed franchise, but seem to be actually craving it. Mission Impossible 6 has performed extremely well on opening weekend and has been proclaimed as the best entry in the franchise. This film proved to be the antidote to the clinical offering studios had been putting out from May to July. Overblown blockbuster instalments with thin plots, heavy computer effects, and a billable star on the poster. Mission Impossible offered audiences a genuinely compelling action film, with mind bending stunts and intriguing plot.
As an aside to all of this blockbuster talk, it is also important to analyse smaller films. This year has continued last years trend established by Jordan Peele’s Get Out to deliver unique horror films. The two stand outs are A Quiet Place and Hereditary. Both films were immensely praised for their originality and have stood out as some of the years best films, perhaps showing the need to place emphasis on small budget original offerings, as opposed to the formulaic nature of blockbuster films.
This film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese, follows the rise and fall of Lucchese crime family associates Henry Hill and his friends over a period from 1955 to 1980. The Lucchese crime family was at the height of its reign in 1978 after the famous Lufthansa heist. The character of Jimmy Conway was based on real-life mobster Jimmy Burke who was still alive when the film was released in 1990. He would have been eligible for parole in 2004, but he died of lung cancer in 1996, while still in prison.
Casino
Greed, deception, money, power, and murder occur between two mobster best friends and a trophy wife over a gambling empire. Set in Las Vegas, Martin Scorsese shows the glamorous and cruel faces of the city as the details of the mob involvement in the casinos of the 1970’s and 80’s are revealed. Robert De Niro’s character, Ace, a smooth operator of the Tangiers casino, is based on the life of Frank ‘Left’ Rosenthal. While the movie begins by stating it is based upon a true story, it never names the actual casino involved. The Tangiers casino is fictional. The story is actually based upon the history of the Stardust casino, a fact well documented in the Vegas history books. Martin Scorsese discreetly documents this fact via the soundtrack, in which the song “Stardust” is heard three different times. An instrumental version plays during Ace and Ginger”s wedding and a vocal version is heard during the scene where Remo asks Marino if Nicky and Ginger are having sex and also during the very end of the final credits.
One common theme through many of the best gangster films ever made is the presence of a casino, or at least some kind of gambling. If you want to get yourself a slice of the glamour and glitz that comes with gambling, but you don’t fancy getting on the wrong side of any gangsters then why not try your luck at some free online casino games? You can roll the dice, spin the wheel, and keep your cards close to your chest without worrying about getting caught in the middle of a mafia gun battle!
By Tara Judah, who is a Director at 20th Century Flicks video shop, a Curator and Online Editor for Cinema Rediscovered, Co-host of a film podcast called Cinema Blindspot and a freelance broadcaster and writer. She’s also Cinema Producer at Watershed. She’s awesome.
Thinking about the films your website’s title references takes me back to when I was just discovering the cinematic joys of heavily stylised violence and gore. A long-time fan of Japanese cinema now – and especially fond of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s films, I am dying in wait for Shoplifters (2018) – it’s strange to think that Battle Royale (2000) was probably one of the first Japanese films I’d seen. With little in the way of social, historical or even genre context, Battle Royale hit me like a bloody hammer, and made the kind of lasting impression that would grow into a wider love of East Asian cinema, kicking off in the early 2000s with the Infernal Affairs trilogy, a series that I am keen to revisit.
The second film your name references is one I loved on release (or shortly thereafter on home entertainment as I was technically still under eighteen when it hit cinemas) but find tiresome now. Though I still think the film is very good – accomplished, enjoyable, well-written and with stellar performances from its leads – there’s something about it that just doesn’t stand the test of time. Perhaps it is due the fatigue with which I regard its maker, Quentin Tarantino. Though talented, his bullying behaviour and ingrained cine-racism and misogyny just don’t do it for me. But Uma Thurman, with her crisp white shirt and jet-black hair, dancing with determination and ordering a five-dollar shake will always be iconic.
What it makes me wonder, then, is about my both my own changing appetite for stylised violence and the wider context through which I now understand the medium of film. Undoubtedly, a younger me was simply more impressed with the aesthetics of excess and gore. But there is too ideology and industry at play.
What I look forward to reflecting on in another ten years is how the next wave of films, from my twenties and thirties, perhaps, stand up – or don’t. Currently making my way through The Purge films, with context aplenty, I am still enjoying the blockbuster cinema of excess and its polemic fare.
