Free First Thursday Screening!
Tickets available at the PFA Theater starting at 4:30

(Jean Renoir, le patron). In 1966 Jacques Rivette made a three-part TV documentary titled Jean Renoir, the Boss, and its centerpiece has rarely been seen since. 'A Portrait of Michel Simon by Jean Renoir, or A Portrait of Jean Renoir by Michel Simon, or The Direction of Actors: Dialogue' . . . is a missing link that's key to understanding Rivette's work. It's a raw record of the after-dinner talk between one of the world's greatest directors and his greatest actor, both in their early seventies, punctuated by clips from the five films they worked on together--Tire-au-Flanc (1928), On Purge Bébé (1931), La Chienne (1931), Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932), and Tosca (1941). It also includes occasional remarks by Rivette, the documentary's producers (Janine Bazin and Andre S. Labarthe), and the stills photographer (the distinguished Henri Cartier-Bresson). The joy Renoir and Simon clearly share at being reunited is complemented by Rivette's determination to exclude nothing, so that the 'direction of actors' applies to him as much as to his two principals, each of whom can be said to be directing the other."--Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
A newly restored print of The Rules of the Game screens on Friday, December 1, as part of our tribute to Janus Films.