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Born in Montmartre, second son to the impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir and former model and seamstress Aline Victorine Charigot. [MORE] [ADD]

– Gabrielle Renard, Renoir’s beloved nursemaid and distant relative, takes him to his first cinema screening.   The two-year-old Renoir is terrified by the experience. [MORE] [ADD]

Younger brother Claude (Coco) is born, and Renoir is sent to school at the College de Sainte-Croix, Neuilly, from which he repeatedly runs away. [MORE] [ADD]

– Enlists in a Dragoon regiment of the French Cavalry as an officer. [MORE] [ADD]

– Serves in WWI as a cavalry officer and is wounded several times.   When a serious leg injury gave rise to the possibility of amputation his unwell mother rushed to his side – a journey which he always believed led to her death a short while later.  Renoir convalesces in Paris, where he spends his time watching his arthritic father paint.   The injury leaves him with a permanent limp.  He continues to serve in the war as a reconnaissance pilot. [MORE] [ADD]

On leave in Paris before training as a pilot he accompanied his older brother Pierre to a Chaplin screening. Later, when his wounds are aggravated by a crash-landing, he is withdrawn from active service and stationed in Paris, where his passion for cinema grows as he catches up on all of Chaplin's films. [MORE] [ADD]

– Meets 16-year-old Andree Heuchling (Dedée) – who may or may not have modelled for his father – while on leave at Les Collettes, near Cagnes-Sur-Mer on the Côte d'Azur. [MORE] [ADD]

Pierre Auguste Renoir dies. [MORE] [ADD]

Marries Andree Heuchling. [MORE] [ADD]

Son Alain is born.   Renoir and Andree move near the forest of Fontainebleu, living near to Gabrielle Renard and her husband Conrad Slade. [MORE] [ADD]

– Begins his film career directing his wife (under the screen name of Catherine Hessling).   Inspired by Erich von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives (1921), he shoots an expensive adaptation of Emile Zola’s Nana (1926).  His films are not a success and he has to sell his father’s paintings to finance them. [MORE] [ADD]

– His film Nana is a commercial failure leaving Renoir with crippling debts.   He is forced to sell some of his father’s paintings to pay them off. [MORE] [ADD]

– Meets film editor Marguerite Houlé – who will become his mistress – while making Le Bled (1929), a film about France’s colonial occupation of Algeria. [MORE] [ADD]

– His decision not to abandon shooting of La Chienne when the film’s financier’s demand a contract actress for the role Renoir planned for his wife results in the end of their marriage. [MORE] [ADD]

– Makes The Crime of M. Lange with the left-wing theatre company Groupe Octobre. [MORE] [ADD]

– His anti-war classic La Grande Illusion is released.   The film, based on the experiences of Renoir’s friend and WWI flying ace Colonel Pinsard, is the director’s first collaboration with Jean Gabin and one of his few commercial successes. [MORE] [ADD]

– Writes and records the French commentary for Joris Ivens’ Terra d’Espagne, a documentary about life in the government-controlled regions of Spain during the Spanish Civil War. [MORE] [ADD]

– Is active in Ciné-Liberté’s campaigns for reform of the French film industry. [MORE] [ADD]

– Renoir, his younger brother Claude, and three friends form a new production company, Nouvelle Edition Française, following the success of his adaptation of Zola’s La Bête humaine. [MORE] [ADD]

Regle du Jeu, the first (and only) production from Nouvelle Edition Française, is released.   The film meets with public hostility and is banned by the French government ‘to avoid representations of our country, our traditions, and our race that change its character, lie about it, and deform it through the prism of an artistic individual who is often original but not always sound.’ [MORE] [ADD]

Returns to France for National Service and is made a lieutenant in the French Army Film Service.   He is sent back to Italy to teach film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, and resume work on Tosca.   Soon returns to France. [MORE] [ADD]

– His affair with Marguerite Houlé comes to an end, and he begins a relationship with Dido Freire, a Brazilian friend of the family. [MORE] [ADD]

Aided by documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, Renoir flees France for USA with Dido Freire.   He works in Hollywood, but has difficulty finding suitable projects. [MORE] [ADD]