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Critical Essay by Alexander Sesonske
La Petite Marchande d'allumettes represents the first full flowering of a tendency that runs through Renoir's films from 1924 to 1970, a tendency to create an atmosphere of strangeness and unreality, to evoke the quality the French call féerique. Only this one among Renoir's films has that quality throughout; more often, it emerges within a prevailing naturalism to lend a sense of enchantment to a scene. (p. 43)
La Petite Marchande d'allumettes remains at least a lovely fantasy, constructed with delicacy and visual imagination, very nearly maintaining its fairy-tale atmosphere unbroken throughout. (p. 49)
On purge bébé is Renoir's film that comes closest to being a photographed play…. Lines are often spoken with great relish and dramatic flair; we notice the cleverness of a line or the way it is delivered more than its role in the dramatic situation or the interactions it furthers. This dialogue does, of course, characterize;...
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This section contains 3,083 words (approx. 11 pages at 300 words per page) |
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