ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on radical philosopher Alain Badiou's Le Siecle to engage with the Popular Front films of Jean Renoir. Badiou begins by suggesting that the century sees itself as the start of a new era. French films of the 1930s of course tended to have longer average shot length than Hollywood works of the period but, even compared to other French works, Renoir's cinema deployed a long take style. Film histories typically see Renoir as a key alternative to a more classical, typically Hollywood style with its shorter takes, its analytical editing and its often shallow focus. The film critic Andre Bazin suggests that the filming — with its connection of interior and exterior spaces and its virtuoso lateral movement — is a summation of the film's mise-en-scene. The film being a First World War drama, its Popular Frontist politics must remain implicit.
