This is the middle story of Satyajit Ray's Bengali trilogy and, after Pather Panchali, we find Apu on the cusp of adulthood. The young lad moves with his family to Benares but with the death of his father, Apu's desire to continue his learning is affirmed and as his passion for knowledge grows so he and his mother find themselves drifting apart, especially as he wants to leave home and go to Calcutta to study. Aparajito is a beautifully drawn film and an immaculate observation of the characters find out more...

After Renoir's reluctant addition of a couple of titles to satisfy the producers desire to expand to feature length, this masterpiece was finally released in 1946. On an idyllic country picnic, a young girl briefly leaves her family and fiance and succumbs to an all-too-brief romance. The careful reconstruction of period (around 1860) is enhanced by a typically touching generosity towards the characters and an aching, poignant sense of love lost, but never forgotten. And, as always in Renoir, find out more...

The master of cinematic naturalism goes to America! Jean Renoir's tale of a family hitting hard times in the dustbowl of the US is beautifully realised. Zachary Scott plays a sharecropper who decides that, if his family is to survive the depression, he needs to go it alone. Buying his own land and tools he sets to work, but is soon faced with the obstinate fact that nature is at best indifferent, at worst devastatingly cruel. Crisis follows catastrophe as, with a proud ethic that is constantly u find out more...

A melodrama about love and sex, jealousy and murder which Renoir invests with a sense of character and place that give it an unusually blunt and sensual impact. The plot is based on a real crime that occurred during the 20s in Martigues, a small town in the south of France. Jacques Mortier, an old friend of Renoir's and the local police chief, assembled the facts and Renoir wrote the script with art critic Carl Einstein. The results are both stark, gentle and sexy. But Italian Neo-Realism before find out more...