Jean Renoir is one of the greatest French film directors of the 20th century. He was son of the impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, raised in a part of France where art was predominant, he received a degree from the University of Aix-en-Provence where he wrote poetry, after which he joined the cavalry to start a military career. He made films in both the silent and later era. His films were noted mainly because of their realism and strong narrative.

During World War I, Renoir was wounded in the leg, and while he was recovering, he spent his time in Paris movie houses where he discovered Charlie Chaplin. When he did recover, he joined the air force and finished the war with the rank of lieutenant. Soon after, he studied ceramics with his brother at Cngnes-sur-mer, near the city of Nice.

He soon developed a taste for theater through his sister-in-law, the actress Vera Sergine, at which time he wrote a screenplay that was later turned into the film Catherine, or Une Vie sans joie (A Life Without Joy) in 1923. The first film he directed was La Fille de l'eau (The Girl of the Water) in 1924 which starred his wife who used to be one of his father's models.

All his early films had a certain amateurishness, however, Renoir's genius found expression in them. In the late 1920s he found inspiration in the writings of Emile Zola, Hans Christian Andersen and others, he also made them into personal films in a French avant-grade style of the period. The films however, had no commercial success and almost ruined Renoir and his financiers. Nevertheless, when the world came out of the soundless era, Renoir released On purge bébé (1931; “Going to Pot”) and La Chienne (1931; “The Bitch”).

His films Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. During the late 1930s, World War II broke out and the Nazis invaded France in 1940, this was when Renoir, like many of his friends, went to Hollywood to continue his career. While there he made, films of varying merit, which took a departure from his previous style: Swamp Water (1941), The Southerner (1945), Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and The Woman on the Beach (1947). In 1944, after being divorced from Catherine Hessling, he married Dido Freire, daughter of Brazilian filmmaker Alberto Cavalcanti. He made The River (1951), his first colour film, in Calcutta, India with the help of Satyajit Ray.