La Marseillaise

Jean Renoir’s 1938 film about the beginnings of the French Revolution, made with the support of France’s most powerful labor union, is, in François Truffaut’s words, a “neorealist fresco” that continually shuttles between characters throughout the social spectrum: peasants living in the mountains, emigrés from Coblenz, Louis XVI (Renoir’s brother Pierre) and his courtiers. A glorious and, today, lesser-known film from one of the cinema’s greatest directors, whose goal, according to André Bazin, “is to go beyond the historical images to uncover the mundane human reality.” With Louis Jouvet and Renoir regulars Gaston Modot, Nadia Sibirskaïa, and Julien Carette. Print courtesy of French Cultural Services. A Rialto Pictures release.