[Unlike one] whose methodical intelligence always dominates his working conditions, Renoir is the most easily influenced of directors. His inspiration, though essentially faithful to a central core of feeling, needs to nourish itself on the human milieu which surrounds it before it can take form. The climate of friendliness in which his French films were made is well known, and has left unforgettable memories with those who worked with him. It was not uncommon, for example, for writer or technician friends to take small roles here and there in the films of this period. For Renoir, making a film was always a pleasant occasion, a game in which everyone was supposed to have a good time. The climate of fraternity which reigned within his company eventually established itself between the film and the spectators, for it was always Renoir’s desire to elicit from the public not admiration but a sense of complicity, a friendly connivance quite foreign to the mechanical impersonality of the medium. In this way Renoir’s films have something in common with the theater: they demand that we enter into the game.