The Criterion Collection

Two new retrospectives happening concurrently on different continents pay serious respect to a pair of thirties French cinema pioneers. First, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jean Renoir is being celebrated with a four-week series (already under way and playing through April 10), which includes a selection from his early silent work (Nana) to his poetic realist classics (Grand Illusion, La bête humaine) to his Hollywood endeavors (The Southerner) and his later lavish color films, including the masterful The River, shot in India. While Renoir was later embraced as a direct, spiritual influence by the French New Wavers, his peer Julien Duvivier’s reputation hasn’t maintained the same level of respect. The Cinémathèque française’s major retrospective on Duvivier, which starts today and runs until May 15) may help remind movie lovers of his own formidable career, which, beyond the staggeringly successful poetic realist classic Pépé le moko, encompassed nearly every genre, including comedy (La fête à Henriette), sea adventure (Black Jack), literary adaptation (Anna Karenina), and even multicharacter New York melodrama (Tales of Manhattan). The Cinémathèque will show fifty-seven films by Duvivier, spanning the decades between 1919 and 1967.