The director Jean Renoir gives himself a star turn in this panoramic romance—made in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War—that’s both a portrait of the artist and a vision of the times. He plays Octave, a failed musician and social butterfly, whose high-society machinations result in a grand reception for France’s heroic transatlantic pilot (Roland Toutain), who is in love with their hostess, a Viennese émigrée (Nora Gregor). She, in turn, is the wife of a French marquis (Marcel...
