The 1930s ended in catastrophe for both for Renoir and for France: La Règle du jeu was a critical and commercial disaster on its release in July 1939 and in 1940 France was occupied by Germany. Even so, Renoir continued to innovate and experiment with his post-war work, yet the thirteen films he made between 1941 and 1969, constituting nearly half of his work in sound cinema, have been sorely neglected in the study of his work.
With detailed readings of the these films and four novels produced by Renoir in his last four decades, Davis explores the direct and indirect ways in which film, and Renoir's films in particular, depict the aftermath of violence.