NANA’

In the Paris of the Second Empire (1852-1870), Nana Coupeau, actress and courtesan, amuses herself by humiliating and ruining her suitors, greedy for luxuries and pleasures until, reduced to poverty, she dies of smallpox. Based on the novel (1880) by Émile Zola, the ninth in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, this is the second of Jean Renoir’s eight silent films, certainly the most important, considered one of his greatest masterpieces, despite its commercial failure which, given its high costs, led to the ruin of the director, who was also its producer. Influenced in the décor by von Stroheim, Renoir gave his then wife Catherine Hessling the leading role. At the beginning, in the part of the playwright Fauchery, the actor C. Moore appears. Moore, the future director Claude Autant-Lara, the film’s set and costume designer. The version presented here makes use of material carefully restored in France.