Ebook: Cracking Gilles Deleuze’s Crystal: Narrative Space-time in the Films of Jean Renoir

Applies complex Deleuzian thought to the quintessential French auteur

Jean Renoir is widely considered as one of the most important technical innovators and politically engaged filmmakers in cinema history. Reassessing the unique qualities of Renoir’s influential visual style by interpreting his films through Gilles Deleuze’s film philosophy, and through previously unpublished production files, Barry Nevin provides a fresh and accessible interdisciplinary perspective that illuminates both the consistency and diversity of Renoir’s oeuvre. Exploring canonised landmarks in Renoir’s career, including La Grande Illusion (1937) and La Règle du jeu (1939), the book also considers neglected films such as Le Bled (1929) and Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) to present a rounded analysis of this quintessential French auteur’s oeuvre.

Key Features

• Examines the complex relationship between Deleuze’s film philosophy and spatial thought with clarity
• Clearly theorises key concepts including time and space
• Analyses films from each phase of Renoir’s career including his silent work, his politically engaged features of the 1930s, his Hollywood films and his post-war costume-dramas
• Investigates Renoir’s key settings, political engagement and evolutions in his narrative style