JEAN RENOIR AND THE AMERICAN SOUTH

French filmmaker Jean Renoir (1894-1979) spent almost a decade in Hollywood in the 1940s, during which time he produced five films reflecting his vision of life and society in the United States. The second of these, The Southerner (1945), serves as a kind of allegory or parable about the debate in the South between those who supported the Agrarian way of life as opposed to the industrial society. Since Renoir knew little about Southern life and culture, he sought out the help of his friend and admirer William Faulkner. While Faulkner's exact contributions to the script are unclear, whether because of Faulkner or other sources, Renoir invested the film with the discourse of the agrarian/industrial debate and brings the conflicting ideas into a kind of reconciliation by the end of the film. While it celebrates the romance of poverty, The Southerner can be read as Renoir's statement on a major theoretical issue in U.S. intellectual history.