"Jean Renoir puts on a master class in ensemble comedy-drama. Period."

"Jean Renoir in a bear suit, or any equivalent thereof, is an absolute must for a good country house party."

"I always think of Renoir whenever I make any picture, and he made a comedy about show business called French Cancan. It’s set around the turn of the century, and Jean Gabin plays the guy who invented the Moulin Rouge night club. He did it by championing the return of the can can, and it’s a glorious film. Gabin was great and Renoir is my favorite director. It’s a show business story, and so is ours."

"Channel Jean Renoir through Luis Buñuel—voilà!—Jean Vigo. This, his only feature, renders the mundane magical, the sad humorous, and the flesh transcendent as it portrays young newlyweds and their life on a river barge. “All day long it’s either smooching or squabbling,” laments a companion. And so it is in this poignant, poetic paean to the beauty and tribulations of married love."

"Well recently I watched Grand Illusion, which I haven’t seen in several years — no, I’ll say another one instead: There’s one called Toni, that’s Jean Renoir before Grand Illusion, before Rules of the Game, and it’s set in the south of France and they’re Italian immigrants who’re working, who’re laborers working in the South of France. It’s very beautiful, kind of lyrical and very sad; a great Renoir movie. I don’t know if it’s seen that much anymore. It’s great."

"In his top ten, Jean-Pierre Gorin tells you about John Ford’s praise of Jean Renoir. I’ll try to top his story: One day, Mizoguchi was asked who his favorite filmmaker was. “Ozu,” he answered without hesitation. And the journalist asked him why. “Because what he does is much more difficult than what I do.” (Needless to say that those six Mizoguchis in the Criterion Collection are priceless and were among Ozu’s favorite films.)"

"I had the privilege of being a member of a festival jury led by Jean Renoir, and subsequently replaced him as a cameo actor in a film. (There obviously were no physical requirements for the role.) I think Grand Illusion may be the most humanistic film ever made, but it’s no more humane than its creator."

"In the early 30s, Gabrielle Chanel introduced Jean Renoir to Luchino Visconti, who would become his assistant director for several films. In the early 60s, Visconti connected Chanel with Romy Schneider. This short film, part of an anthology feature on morality and love with segments directed by other Italian masters such as Fellini and De Sica, focuses on a society woman (Schneider dressed in CHANEL) and her unfaithful husband. The production could be seen as an homage to the designer’s world."

"When people have asked me suddenly, “What is your favorite film?” I have sometimes said “Contempt by Godard,” also in the Criterion Collection, and sometimes I’ve said “The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu) by Jean Renoir.” There are a couple of more recent films that seem to sometimes be my answer to that question, but those two have stayed on my “perhaps my very favorite” list for a long time. I first saw The Rules of the Game around fifty years ago, and I saw it again quite recently. Apparently I’m the same person I used to be, because I still felt that everything in the world is in that film, and I’m inside of it myself somehow. By the way, another French film that made an enormous impression on me was À nos amours by Maurice Pialat."

"The easiest choice. The greatest of movies. Never has a film been so formally rich and so teeming with life. Jean Renoir’s romantic roundelay is as fluid and multifaceted as the characters he depicts with equal doses of compassion and bemusement, and this depiction of the mercurial nature of human behavior, of the beauty and absurdity of civilization, has never been equaled. The Dance of Death is the greatest sequence, but it’s also a dance of life. For many years, the film was literally unavailable in an acceptable print or video version in this country. For a showing several years ago (before the recent Janus Films rerelease), the Museum of the Moving Image had to import a 35 mm print from England. And as though it isn’t enough to be able to own a masterfully restored copy, the Criterion DVD has a great documentary about Renoir by Jacques Rivette!"