Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir's first American film was Swamp Water of 1941, and it passed in conflict with the studio. By the AFI's relay, Renoir writes in his autobiography that the executive producer Darryl F. Zanuck objected to going to Georgia for the exteriors and wanted the sets put up on the Fox lot; Renoir's reply to Zanuck of 1 August 1941 shows that the two also disagreed over Thursday Ragan, the character Walter Huston plays. Renoir tells of Zanuck telephoning on the night he was informed his employment had ended, asking him to go on directing the film; once he had finished it he brought his contract with the studio to an end. He says he made This Land Is Mine of 1943 in answer to the boasting of French exiles sitting safely in Los Angeles that resistance would have come to them of its own accord had they been living in France. On The Southerner, when the first offer came he read Hugo Butler's adaptation and refused it, then rewrote the novel to his own reading with the help of his secretary Paula Walling; in his autobiography he counts that film among his most satisfying American works, and the National Board of Review chose him as the best director of 1945.