DIED. Nicole Alphand, 61, elegant wife of former French Ambassador Herve Alphand, who shone as Washington's most glittering hostess through three Administrations (1958-65); of cancer; in Paris.

DIED. Reginald Maudling, 61, prominent member of the British Conservative Party and former Chancellor of the Exchequer (1962-64); of kidney failure; in London. An economic pragmatist as Chancellor, Maudling was touted often as a future Prime Minister, but in 1965 lost the Tory leadership election to Edward Heath by 17 out of nearly 300 votes cast.

DIED. Edvard Kardelj, 69, Yugoslav Communist ideologist and heir apparent to President Tito; of cancer; in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. When his nation was expelled from the Soviet-led Cominform in 1948, Vice President Kardelj devised its new ideological foundation, granting greater freedom to local factories and party cells as well as pioneering a foreign policy of nonalignment. Until taken ill five years ago, the loyal official was widely expected to succeed Tito, now 86.

DIED. Jean Renoir, 84, master French film maker whose work strongly reflected his own ironic wit, love of nature and sympathetic curiosity about human behavior; of a heart attack; in Beverly Hills, Calif. Son of Impressionist Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean as a red-haired child often posed for him and later married one of his models. With his wife as the star, Renoir directed his first movie in 1924; during the next 45 years he directed and wrote some three dozen films, among them such masterpieces as Toni (1934), the antiwar Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939), a gentle satire of society as depicted in a weekend house party. Fleeing the Nazis in 1939, Renoir settled in Hollywood, and though his output slowed, his later films included such acclaimed works as The Southerner (1945), and The River (1950), filmed in India. A singularly congenial, humane man whose work greatly influenced the New Wave directors of the 1950s (including Truffaut and Godard) and onetime Apprentices Luchino Visconti and Satyajit Ray, Renoir considered himself primarily a storyteller, always filming his special kind of tale. "I am interested in what happens to people," he once explained, "when they must adapt to a new world."

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