Described by Alain Bergala in Cahiers du cnema as ?Renoir's true heir today,? Maurice Pialat is squarely in the tradition of French auteur cinema. Like Renoir, Feyder, and Gremillon in the 1930s, and Godard, Resnais, Varda, and a few others after the war, Pialat is an artisan who works both within and against the French film industry. He has often acknowledged his ?debt? to Renoir, as well as to Pagnol, in terms of both working methods and a certain conception of realism.
