Greatest French Directors
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Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of four children in a bourgeois Franco-Swiss family. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a preeminent family of Swiss bankers. During World War II Godard became a naturalized citizen of Switzerland and attended school in Nyons, Switzerland. His parents divorced in 1948, at which time he returned to Paris to attend the Lycée Rohmer. In 1949 he studied at the Sorbonne to prepare for a degree in ethnology. However, it was during this time that he began attending with François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, and Éric Rohmer.
In 1950 Godard, with Rivette and Rohmer, founded "Gazette du cinéma", which published five issues between May and November. He wrote a number of articles for the journal, often using the pseudonym "Hans Lucas". After Godard worked on and financed two films by Rivette and Rohmer, Godard's family cut off their financial support in 1951, and he resorted to a Bohemian lifestyle that included stealing food and money when necessary. In January 1952 he began writing film criticism for "Les cahiers du cinéma". Later that year he traveled to North and South America with his father and attempted to make his first film (of which only a tracking shot from a car was ever accomplished).
In 1953 he returned to Paris briefly before securing a job as a construction worker on a dam project in Switzerland. With the money from the job, he made a short film in 1954 about the building of the dam called Operation Concrete (1958). Later that year his mother was killed in a motor scooter accident in Switzerland. In 1956 Godard began writing again for "Les cahiers du cinéma" as well as for the journal "Arts". In 1957 Godard worked as the press attache for "Artistes Associés", and made his first French film, All Boys Are Called Patrick (1959).
In 1958 he shot Charlotte and Her Boyfriend (1958), his homage to Jean Cocteau. Later that year he took unused footage of a flood in Paris shot by Truffaut and edited it into a film called A Story of Water (1961), which was an homage to Mack Sennett. In 1959 he worked with Truffaut on the weekly publication "Temps de Paris". Godard wrote a gossip column for the journal, but also spent much time writing scenarios for films and a body of critical writings which placed him firmly in the forefront of the "nouvelle vague" aesthetic, precursing the French New Wave.
It was also in that year Godard began work on Breathless (1960). In 1960 he married Anna Karina in Switzerland. In April and May he shot The Little Soldier (1963) in Geneva and was preparing the film for a fall release in Paris. However, French censors banned it due to its references to the Algerian war, and it was not shown until 1963. In March 1960 Breathless (1960) premiered in Paris. It was hugely successful both with the film critics and at the box office, and became a landmark film in the French New Wave with its references to American cinema, its jagged editing and overall romantic/cinephilia approach to filmmaking. The film propelled the popularity of male lead Jean-Paul Belmondo with European audiences.
In 1961 Godard shot A Woman Is a Woman (1961), his first film using color widescreen stock. Later that year he participated in the collective effort to remake the film The Seven Deadly Sins (1962), which was heralded as an important project in artistic collaboration. In 1962 Godard shot Vivre sa vie (1962) in Paris, his first commercial success since "Breathless". Later that year he shot a segment entitled "Le Nouveau Monde" for the collective film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963), another important work in the history of collaborative multiple-authored art.
In 1963 Godard completed a film in homage to Jean Vigo entitled The Carabineers (1963), which was a resounding failure with the public and stirred furious controversy with film critics. Also that year he worked on a couple of collective films: The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers (1964) (from which Godard's sequence was later cut) and Six in Paris (1965). In 1964 Godard and his wife Anna Karina formed their own production company, Anouchka Films. They shot a film called A Married Woman (1964), which censors forced them to re-edit due to a topless sunbathing scene shot by Jacques Rozier. The censors also made Godard change the title to "Une femme marié" so as to not give the impression that this "scandalous" woman was the typical French wife. Later in the year, two French television programs were produced in devotion to Godard's work.
In the spring of 1965 Godard shot Alphaville (1965) in Paris; in the summer he shot Pierrot the Fool (1965) in Paris and the south of France. Shortly thereafter he and Anna Karina separated. Following their divorce, Godard shot Made in U.S.A (1966), "Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1966)", "L'amour en l'an 2000" (1966) (a sequel to "Alphaville" shot as a sketch for the collective film "L'amour travers les ages" (1966)).
In 1967 Godard shot The Chinese (1967) in Paris with Anne Wiazemsky, who was the granddaughter of French novelist François Mauriac. During the making of the film Godard and Wiazemsky were married in Paris. Later in the year he was prevented from traveling to North Vietnam for the shooting of a sequence for the collective film Far from Vietnam (1967). He instead shot the sequence in Paris, entitled "Camera-Oeil". Also during 1967 Godard participated (as the only Frenchman) on an Italian collective film called Love and Anger (1969).
In 1968 Godard was commissioned by French television to make Joy of Learning (1969). However, television producers were so outraged by the product Godard produced that they refused to show it. In May of that year Henri Langlois was fired by the head of the French Jean-Pierre Gorin to form the Dziga-Vertov group, infuriating Godard. He became increasingly concerned with socialist solutions to an idealist cinema, especially in providing the proletariat with the means of production and distribution. Along with other militantly political filmmakers in the Dziga-Vertov group, Godard published a series of 'Ciné-Tracts' outlining these viewpoints. In the summer of 1968 Godard traveled to New York City and Berkeley, California, to shoot the film "One American Movie", which was never completed. In September he made a trip to Canada to start another film called "Communication(s)", which also went unfinished, and then made a visit to Cuba before returning to France.
In 1969 Godard traveled to England, where he made the film See You at Mao (1970) for BBC Weekend Television, but the network later refused to show it. In the late spring he traveled with the Dziga-Vertov group to Prague to secretly shoot the film "Pravda". Later that year he shot Lotte in Italia (1971) ("Struggle for Italy") for Italian television. It was never shown, either.
In 1970 Godard traveled to Lebanon to shoot a film for the Palestinian Liberation Organization entitled "Jusque à la victoire" (1970) ("Until Victory"). Later that year he traveled to dozens of American universities trying to raise money for the film. In spite of his efforts, it was never released.- Writer
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Son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre Auguste, he had a happy childhood. Pierre Renoir was his brother, and Claude Renoir was his nephew. After the end of World War I, where he won the Croix de Guerre, he moved from scriptwriting to filmmaking. He married Catherine Hessling, for whom he began to make movies; he wanted to make a star of her. They separated in 1930, although he remained married to her until 1943. His next partner was Marguerite Renoir, whom he never married, although she took his name. He left France in 1941 during the German invasion of France during World War II and became a naturalized US citizen.- Writer
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French director François Truffaut began to assiduously go to the movies at age seven. He was also a great reader but not a good pupil. He left school at 14 and started working. In 1947, aged 15, he founded a film club and met André Bazin, a French critic, who became his protector. Bazin helped the delinquent Truffaut and also when he was put in jail because he deserted the army. In 1953 Truffaut published his first movie critiques in "Les Cahiers du Cinema." In this magazine Truffaut, and some of his friends as passionate as he was, became defenders of what they call the "author policy". In 1954, as a test, Truffaut directed his first short film. Two years afterwords he assisted Roberto Rossellini with some later abandoned projects.
The year 1957 was an important one for him: he married Madeleine Morgenstern, the daughter of an important film distributor, and founded his own production company, Les Films du Carrosse; named after Jean Renoir's The Golden Coach (1952). He also directed The Mischief Makers (1957), considered the real first step of his cinematographic work. His other big year was 1959: the huge success of his first full-length film, The 400 Blows (1959), was the beginning of the New Wave, a new way of making movies in France. This was also the year his first daughter, Laura Truffaut, was born.
From 1959 until his death, François Truffaut's life and films are mixed up. Let's only note he had two other daughters Eva Truffaut (b. 1961) and Josephine (b. 1982, with French actress Fanny Ardant). Truffaut was the most popular and successful French film director ever. His main themes were passion, women, childhood and faithfulness.- Writer
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Luc Besson spent the first years of his life following his parents, scuba diving instructors, around the world. His early life was entirely aquatic. He already showed amazing creativity as a youth, writing early drafts of The Big Blue (1988) and The Fifth Element (1997), as an adolescent bored in school. He planned on becoming a marine biologist specializing in dolphins until a diving accident at age 17 which rendered him unable to dive any longer. He moved back to Paris, where he was born, and only at age 18 did he first have an urban life or television. He realized that film was a medium which he could combine all his interests in various arts together, so he began taking odd jobs on various films. He moved to America for three years, then returned to France and formed Les Films de Loups - his own production company, which later changed its name to Les Films de Dauphins. He is now able to dive again.- Writer
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Jean Cocteau was one of the most multi-talented artists of the 20th century. In addition to being a director, he was a poet, novelist, painter, playwright, set designer, and actor. He began writing at 10 and was a published poet by age 16. He collaborated with the "Russian Ballet" company of Sergei Diaghilev, and was active in many art movements, but always remained a poet at heart. His films reflect this fact. Cocteau was also a homosexual, and made no attempt to hide it. His favorite actor was his close friend Jean Marais, who appeared in almost every one of his films. Cocteau made about twelve films in his career, all rich with symbolism and surreal imagery. He is now regarded as one of the most important avant-garde directors in cinema.- Writer
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Robert Bresson trained as a painter before moving into films as a screenwriter, making a short film (atypically a comedy), Public Affairs (1934) in 1934. After spending more than a year as a German POW during World War II, he made his debut with Angels of Sin (1943) in 1943. His next film, The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (1945) would be the last time he would work with professional actors. From Journal d'un cure de campagne (1951) (aka "Diary of a Country Priest") onwards, he created a unique minimalist style in which all but the barest essentials are omitted from the film (often, crucial details are only given in the soundtrack), with the actors (he calls them "models") giving deliberately flat, expressionless performances. It's a demanding and difficult, intensely personal style, which means that his films never achieved great popularity (it was rare for him to make more than one film every five years), but he has a fanatical following among critics, who rate him as one of the greatest artists in the history of the cinema. He retired in the 1980s, after failing to raise the money for a long-planned adaptation of the Book of Genesis.- Writer
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Jean Vigo had bad health since he was a child. Son of anarchist militant Miguel Almareyda, he also never really recovered from his father's mysterious death in jail when he was 12. Abandoned by his mother, he passed from boarding school to boarding school. Aged 23, through meetings with people involved in the movies, he started working in the cinema, then bought a camera and shot his first film, a short documentary, À Propos de Nice (1930) then, two years later, Taris (1931) (aka Taris champion de natation). These two very personal works frighten the producers, and it lasted two years before someone showed some interest in his project of a children movie. This would be his masterpiece, Zero for Conduct (1933) (aka Zero for Conduct), a subversive despiction of an authoritarian boarding school, which directly came from Vigo's memories. The film is straightaway censored for its "anti-French spirit." In despair, he nevertheless shot L'Atalante (1934), a romantic and realistic story of a young couple beginning their life together in a barge. He died just afterward of septicemy. His work would not be recognized before 1945. This accursed filmmaker is now admired for his poetic realism.- Director
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Louis Malle, the descendant of a French nobleman who made a fortune in beet sugar during the Napoleonic Wars, created films that explored life and its meaning. Malle's family discouraged his early interest in film but, in 1950, allowed him to enter the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris. His résumé showed that he had worked as an assistant to film maker Robert Bresson when Malle was hired by underwater explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau to be a camera operator on the Calypso. Cousteau soon promoted him to be co-director of The Silent World (1956) ("The Silent World"). Years later, Cousteau called Malle the best underwater cameraman he ever had. Malle's third film, The Lovers (1958) ("The Lovers"), starring Jeanne Moreau broke taboos against on screen eroticism. In 1968 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the obscenity conviction of an Ohio theater that had exhibited "Les Amants." A director during the Nouvelle Vague, New Wave" of 1950s and 1960s (though technically not considered a Nouvelle Vague auteur), he also made films on the other side of the Atlantic, starting with Pretty Baby (1978), the film that made Brooke Shields an international superstar. The actress who played a supporting role in that film was given a starring role in Malle's next American film, Atlantic City (1980). That promising actress was Susan Sarandon.
In one of his later French films, Goodbye, Children (1987), Malle was able to find catharsis for an experience that had haunted him since the German occupation of France in World War II. At age 12, he was sent to a Catholic boarding school near Paris that was a refuge for several Jewish students, one of them was Malle's rival for academic honors and his friend. A kitchen worker at the school with a grudge became an informant. The priest who was the principal was arrested and the Jewish students were sent off to concentration camps.
In his final film, Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), Malle again penetrated the veil between life and art as theater people rehearse Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." In that film, Malle worked again with theater director Andre Gregory and actor-playwright Wallace Shawn, the conversationalists of My Dinner with Andre (1981). Malle was married to Candice Bergen, and he succumbed to lymphoma in 1995.- Writer
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The name "Melville" is not immediately associated with film. It conjures up images of white whales and crackbrained captains, of naysaying notaries and soup-spilling sailors. It is the countersign to a realm of men and their deeds, both heroic and villainous. It is the American novel, with its Ishmaels and its Claggarts a challenge to the European canon. It is Herman Melville. And yet, for over three decades, it was also worn by one of the French cinema's brightest lights, Jean-Pierre Melville, whose art was as revolutionary as that of the eponymous author.
Jean-Pierre Grumbach was born on October 20, 1917, to a family of Alsatian Jews. In his youth he studied in Paris, where he was first exposed to great films, among them Robert J. Flaherty's and W.S. Van Dyke's silent documentary White Shadows in the South Seas (1928). It left so deep a mark upon the pubescent Grumbach that he became a regular at the cinema, an obsession that would benefit him in adulthood. His own earliest efforts, 16mm home movies, were made with a camera given to him by his father in this period. In 1937, however, his career was forestalled when he began obligatory service in the French army. He was still in uniform when the Nazis invaded in 1940; under the nom de guerre of Melville, he aided the Resistance and was eventually forced to flee to England. There he joined the Free French forces and took part in the Allies' liberation of continental Europe. After the war, despite a desire to revert to Grumbach, he found that pseudonym had stuck.
Eager to earn his place in the movie industry, Melville applied to the French Technicians' Union but was denied membership. Undaunted by what he regarded as party politics, he set up his own production company in 1946 and started releasing films outside the system. The first, a low-budget short titled 24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (1946), was a success, inspired by his boyhood love for the circus. His feature-length debut, The Silence of the Sea (1949), was highly innovative. An intimate piece on the horrors of World War II, it starred unknown actors and was filmed by a skeleton crew. Its schedule was unusual: It was shot over 27 days in the course of a year. Its production was unusual: it incorporated "on-location" scenes--rarities in that era--done without vital permits. Its provenance was unusual: it was adapted from a book before the author's consent was obtained. Above all, its style was unusual. Its dark, claustrophobic sets and bottom-lit close-ups signaled a departure from the highly cultured cinema of René Clair, Marcel Pagnol, Abel Gance and Jacques Feyder. It was neither comedietta nor costume drama nor avant-garde "cinéma pur." Where its roots may have been in Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion (1937), it was clearly something new.
Over the following 12 years Melville continued to create films that would influence the auteurs of La Nouvelle Vague (i.e., the French New Wave.) In 1950 he collaborated with Jean Cocteau on an unsatisfying version of The Terrible Children (1950), the tale of a strange, incestuous relationship between siblings. When You Read This Letter (1953), with French and Italian backing, was his first commercial project. While it was unprofitable, the fee he received allowed him to establish a studio outside of Paris. His next work, Bob the Gambler (1956), featured Roger Duchesne, a popular leading man of the 1930s who had drifted into the underworld during the war. As such, he was a uniquely apt choice for the role of the fashionable, self-immolating Bob. His supporting cast included Daniel Cauchy as toadying sidekick Paolo and newcomer Isabelle Corey as the temptress Anne. Although the picture was not a hit, it was a favorite of the aficionados that frequented Henri Langlois' Cinémathèque Français. Among them were the young savants Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, the latter of whom used Guy Decomble of "Bob le flambeur" in his The 400 Blows (1959) that ushered in the "New Wave" era. They adored the hip, new rendering of a tired scenario, much of it shot in the streets with hidden cameras. They viewed it as fresh and daring, a "freeing up" through the rejection of high-minded literary adaptations and the embracing of pop culture. Simply put, Melville refused to play by the rules, and they followed suit.
In retrospect, "Bob le flambeur" seems straightforward: A reformed mobster turned high-stakes gambler comes out of retirement to pull one last job. Its genius lies in its simplicity. Melville admired American culture, as his alias indicated. He drove around Paris in an enormous Cadillac, sporting a Stetson hat and aviator sunglasses. He drank Coca-Cola and listened to American radio. The works of American directors John Ford and Howard Hawks were appealing to him, as they were ageless sagas of heroes and villains. Melville strove to build his own pantheon by blending the American ethos with his postwar sensibilities. As he perceived it, it was America that had valiantly rescued France from German occupation. Still, for a young man with Alsatian roots, the line separating good guys and bad guys had been breached, and one can see this disillusionment from The Silence of the Sea (1949) onward. Thus, while he borrowed from the American noir's revolt against the dichotomous Hollywood creations of the 1930s, the artist was forging his own apocryphal brand of dark tragedy. In his paradigm, a criminal could be a kind of hero within his milieu, so long as he stuck by his word and his allegiances. It was his personal style and his adherence to the code of honor that defined a "good guy"; obversely, it was his faith in others that was his downfall. It is a universe without the possibility for salvation, in which love and friendship are brief interludes in the cat-and-mouse games that lead to certain destruction. In that sense, Bob is a crucial link between Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937) and Godard's Breathless (1960), in which Melville gave a brilliant cameo performance.
Jean-Pierre Melville is often regarded as the godfather of the Nouvelle Vague. Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that had it not been for his aforementioned passion for American film, he might have shown us a very different "Bob le flambeur". Originally conceived as a hard-boiled gangster flick about the step-by-step plotting of a heist, Melville was forced to rethink its narrative after watching John Huston's remarkably similar The Asphalt Jungle (1950). It was only then that he had the idea to turn Bob into the comedy of manners that so delighted the cinephiles of the day. For this and other debts of gratitude, his next picture, Two Men in Manhattan (1959), was "a love letter to New York" and the America he revered. It was also his third straight box-office flop, however, and it caused Melville to break away from a New Wave movement that he felt catered to the cognoscenti. He later said, "If . . . I have consented to pass for their adopted father for a while, I do not wish it anymore, and I have put some distance in between us."
The first step in this split came with Léon Morin, Priest (1961), a wartime piece about a priest's endeavors to bring redemption to the inhabitants of a small town. Produced by Carlo Ponti, it was a big-budget affair with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva, both household names by then. On the strength of its favorable reception, Melville released four consecutive cops-and-robbers movies, the most notable of which were The Informer (1962) and The Samurai (1967). Belmondo again headlined in "Le Doulous", not as a clergyman but as the fingerman Silien, whose loyalty to his old mob cronies entangles him in a web of intrigue and disaster. During the making of "Le Samouraï", a hauntingly minimalist film about a doomed assassin, Melville's studio burned to the ground and the project was completed in rented facilities. Regardless, it was a critical and commercial success. Presenting Alain Delon as ultra-cool assassin Jef Costello, it was considered one of the most meticulously-crafted pictures in the history of the cinema. Delon would later star in a second masterpiece, The Red Circle (1970), featuring the ultimate onscreen jewel heist. His Charles Bronson-cum-Jack Lord sang-froid toughness served as a counterpoint in Melville's oeuvre to the lighter and less predictable Belmondo. Another memorable production was Army of Shadows (1969), an austere portrait of perfidy within the ranks of the French Resistance.
It is trite to say that a particular artist is "not for everyone." In Melville's case, this statement could not be more fitting. Despite a round belly and an unattractive face, he was a notorious womanizer, and his chauvinism is painfully obvious in his movies. They are cynical, male-driven works in which women are devoid of nobility, merely functioning as beautiful chess pieces. His men also lack spiritual depth, diligently playing out their roles toward the final showdown. A "profound moment" inevitably occurs before a mirror, a cliché for which many critics do not share the creator's enthusiasm. As a result of these peccadilloes, as well as its lack of back-stories and character motivations, Melville's later output has been accused of stiffness, with its wooden troupe of cops, crooks and general mauvais sujets. Further, well-structured plots notwithstanding, Melville films are methodically paced with tremendous attention paid to time and place. Hollywoodphiles often find them slow, with an overemphasis on tone and style.
Some have gone as far as to claim that the réalizateur's genius was outstripped by his importance to the development of the medium. They look to him as a sort of Moses figure, helping to guide the Nouvelle Vague to the promised land without partaking in its fruits. At his death by heart attack in 1973, the 55-year-old had directed just 14 projects, at least six of which are acknowledged classics. Aside from Godard and Truffaut, luminaries such as John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann, Volker Schlöndorff, Johnnie To and Martin Scorsese have pointed to him as an key influence. If a man's legacy is best measured not only by its quality but by the respect of his colleagues, Jean-Pierre Melville's contribution to cinema surely ranks with the greatest.- Director
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Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a self-taught director who was very quickly interested by cinema, with a predilection for a fantastic cinema where form is as important as the subject. Thus he started directing TV commercials and video clips (such as Julien Clerc in 1984). At the same time he met designer/drawer Marc Caro with whom he made two short animation movies: L'évasion (1978) and Le manège (1979), the latter winning a César for the best short movie. After these two successful movies Jeunet and Caro spent more than one year together by making every detail (scenario, costumes, production design) of their third short movie: The Bunker of the Last Gunshots (1981). This movie combined sci-fi and heroic-fantasy in a visually delirious story of the rising paranoia among soldiers trapped underground. With that movie they garnered several festival prizes in France. (This movie also marked their first collaboration with Gilles Adrien who later wrote the story of their two feature movies with them). After that Jeunet directed two other short movies without the help of Caro: Pas de repos pour Billy Brakko (1983), then Foutaises (1989) with Dominique Pinon who became another regular collaborator of Jeunet. All Jeunet's short movies won a lot of awards in France but also overseas and he won a second César with Foutaises (1989).
In 1991, Jeunet and Caro took their first steps in a feature movie: Delicatessen (1991). It was such a success that it won 4 Césars including the awards for the best new director(s) and the best scenario. For this movie Jeunet and Caro divided responsibilities with the former guiding the actors and the latter coordinating the artistic elements. And Jeunet showed again his liking to have Dominique Pinon, of course, but also Rufus, Jean-Claude Dreyfus and Ticky Holgado who appeared again in Jeunet's next movies, or Maurice Lamy who already had a little role in Foutaises (1989). The success of Delicatessen (1991) even surprised Jeunet and Caro themselves but they took advantage of that in order to finally make their almost 10 year-old project! This project took more than 4 more years to be carried out but the movie turned out enormous: The City of Lost Children (1995) was a black tale and was so innovative at this period that they needed to create new software for the special effects (mostly made by Pitof). Jeunet and Caro kept the same responsibilities as in Delicatessen (1991) and the movie also combined different international skills: US actor Ron Perlman, Chilean-born actor Daniel Emilfork, Iranian cinematographer Darius Khondji (who was already in the crew of Delicatessen (1991)), Americo-Italian composer Angelo Badalamenti and French fashion-designer Jean-Paul Gaultier for the costumes. While the film was supposed to be suitable for children, some considered it "dark", to which Jeunet and Caro replied that it was no more "dark" than Pinocchio (1940) or Bambi (1942).
But these critics didn't stop the movie from being successful and when the movie gained them further attention, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood called them. Thus in 1997, Jeunet left France to make a temporary career in the USA for the fourth installment of the 'Alien' series: Alien: Resurrection (1997). Marc Caro followed him just as a design supervisor but Jeunet brought with him a little army' of his usual collaborators (mostly French): actors Dominique Pinon and Ron Perlman, but also Pitof, Darius Khondji or editor Hervé Schneid, and for the first time Alain Carsoux who was responsible of the special effects of Jeunet's next film. In 2000, after two collaborations with Caro and one in the US, Jeunet came back to France in order to make a more personal movie, even if Guillaume Laurant wrote the story with him. Thus he used a lot of different details he wrote everywhere during his life (and also recycled things he'd already done, e.g. in Foutaises (1989)) and shot his story mostly in the Parisian suburb of Montmartre where he lives. Then the result was Amélie (2001) starring Audrey Tautou and Mathieu Kassovitz. With this movie Jeunet made the biggest worldwide success of French cinema history. A real magical potion, which won innumerable awards in the whole world including 4 Césars (therefore Jeunet won his fifth and sixth Césars!).
Jeunet eventually decided to adapt Sébastien Japrisot's book A Very Long Engagement (2004) for which he called Audrey Tautou and Dominique Pinon again, but also many other famous French actors and Jodie Foster. It had one of the most important budgets in French film history and eventually had a good international success and many nominations and awards.- Writer
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The comic genius Jacques Tati was born Taticheff, descended from a noble Russian family. His grandfather, Count Dimitri, had been a general in the Imperial Army and had served as military attaché to the Russian Embassy in Paris. His father, Emmanuel Taticheff, was a well-to-do picture framer who conducted his business in the fashionable Rue de Castellane and had taken a Dutch-Italian woman, Marcelle Claire van Hoof, as his wife. To Emmanuel's lasting dismay, Jacques had no intention of following in the family trade of framing and restoration. Instead, he went on to pursue an education (specialising in arts and engineering) at the military academy of Lycée de Saint Germain-en-laye. After graduating, his main preoccupation became sports. He already boxed and played tennis and was introduced to rugby during a sojourn in London. Back in Paris, he joined the Racing Club de France (1925-30), and for some time seriously contemplated a career as a professional rugby player. However, Jacques also had an uncanny talent for pantomime, imitating athletes at his school to the amusement of classmates and teachers. By the time he had reached the age of 24, encouraged by his success as an entertainer in the annual revue of the Racing Club, he suddenly decided to combine his two passions and, without further ado, entered the world of show business.
From 1931, Jacques toured the Parisian music halls, theatres and circuses with his impersonations, acrobatics, drunk waiter and comic tennis routines (the latter would be famously re-enacted by his alter ego, Monsieur Hulot). He had by this time changed his name to 'Tati' in order to accommodate theatre bills.The French magazine "Le Jour" was among the first to acknowledge his growing popularity, describing Jacques as "a clown of great talent". At the same time, he made his screen debut in a series of short featurettes, tailored to show off his practised gags, notably Oscar, champion de tennis (1932) and Watch Your Left (1936) ("Watch your left", a very funny boxing sketch). The Second World War, military service and inherent strictures resulting from the German occupation put a temporary halt to his career. Then, in 1946, through a friend, the writer-director Claude Autant-Lara, Jacques obtained a small role in the whimsical fantasy Sylvie et le fantôme (1946), about a girl (Odette Joyeux) in love with a ghost (Tati).
The small township of Sainte-Sévère, where Tati had taken refuge during the occupation, served as inspiration for his first film, initially conceived as a one-reeler entitled "L'Ecole des facteurs" (School for Postmen). Unable to find widespread distribution, Tati decided to re-shoot the bucolic comedy --with himself in the central role -- as a feature film, using the villagers as extras and filming everything on location. And thus, Jour de Fête (1949) and Francois the village postman came into being. However, the film was soon overshadowed by his next enterprise and a critic of the satirical publication Le Canard Enchainé even proposed to fight a duel with anyone who would prefer "Jour de Fete" to Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953)!
With "Holiday", Tati reinvented the visual comedy of the silent era in a style not dissimilar to that of Max Linder. There is hardly any dialogue, except for background chatter, but natural and human noises are enhanced whenever required for the desired comic effect. The film is almost plotless, essentially comprised of a series of vignettes (to the recurring musical motif of Alain Romans's breezy 1952 composition "Quel temps fait-il à Paris?") at a seaside resort frequented by assorted holiday makers. All are stereotypical of their respective social class, as are the villagers themselves. Their inability to escape social conditioning and the stress they endure in the process of 'enjoying themselves' are observed with a keen satirical eye through their interaction with each other. At the centre is the ever-present character of the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, who arrives in a rickety 1924 Amilcar. Tall and reedy, clad in a poplin coat, wearing a crumpled hat, striped socks, trousers which are patently too short, rolled umbrella, a pipe firmly clenched between his teeth and perambulating with an odd stiff-legged gait, Hulot cuts an ungainly, yet hilarious figure. Well-meaning though he is, he invariably leaves disaster in his wake and departs the scene quickly as things go wrong, letting others sort out the mess. "Holiday" is more than just a brilliant collection of sight gags, but also an ironic observation of the foibles of human nature. Tati acknowledged the influence of both Buster Keaton and W.C. Fields in the creation of Hulot. Very much like Keaton or Charles Chaplin, he was also a consummate perfectionist who micro-managed each scene with unerring precision. Comedy for Tati was a serious business.
In Tati's subsequent ventures, Hulot became relegated from being the focus of the story to merely subordinate to its concept. As just one of many characters, Hulot weaves in and out of My Uncle (1958) and Playtime (1967), his simple, old-fashioned world contrasted sharply against the coldness of mechanisation, obsessive consumerism and the growing uniformity of houses and cities. "Playtime", shot in 70mm, took six years to make and required the creation of a massive glass and concrete high-rise set with myriad corridors and cubicles (dubbed 'Tativille' and built at a cost of $800,000) which raised the picture's total budget to $3 million and left Tati bankrupt. His next project, Trafic (1971), a satire of modern man's love of cars, failed to recoup these losses. Creditors impounded Tati's films, which were not re-released until 1977, when a canny Parisian distributor expunged his outstanding debts. Throughout his career, Tati remained obdurately committed to his artistic integrity and to his independence as a film maker. He was one of few directors who consistently employed non-professional actors. He turned down offers from Hollywood for a 15-minute series of television comedies, following the success of "Mon Oncle". He summed it all up by declaring "I could have satisfied the producers of the world by making a whole series of little Hulot films, and I would have made a lot of money. But I would not have been able to do what I like - work freely". (NY Times, November 6, 1982)- Director
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Agnès Varda was born on 30 May 1928 in Ixelles, Belgium. She was a director and writer, known for Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Vagabond (1985) and Faces Places (2017). She was married to Jacques Demy. She died on 29 March 2019 in Paris, France.- Writer
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René Clair was born on 11 November 1898 in Paris, France. He was a writer and director, known for Man About Town (1947), Beauties of the Night (1952) and The Grand Maneuver (1955). He was married to Bronia Clair. He died on 15 March 1981 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France.- Writer
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Beginning his film career as a screenwriter, Henri-Georges Clouzot switched over to directing and in 1943 had the distinction of having his film The Raven (1943) banned by both the German forces occupying France and the Free French forces fighting them, but for different reasons. He shot to international fame with The Wages of Fear (1953) and consolidated that success with Diabolique (1955), but continuous ill health caused large gaps in his output, and several projects had to be abandoned (though one, Hell (1994), was subsequently filmed by Claude Chabrol). His films are typically relentless suspense thrillers, similar to Alfred Hitchcock's but with far less light relief.- Director
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The world's first female filmmaker, French-born Alice Guy entered the film business in 1896 as a secretary at Gaumont, a manufacturer of movie cameras and projectors who had purchased a "cinématographer" from its inventors, the Lumiere brothers. The next year Gaumont became the world's first motion picture production company when they switched to creating movies, and Guy became its first film director. She impressed the company so much with the output (she averaged two two-reelers a week) and quality of her productions that by 1905 she was made the company's production director, supervising its other directors. In 1907 she married Herbert Blaché, an Englishman who ran Gaumont's British and German offices. The pair went to the U.S. to set up the company's operations there. In 1910 Mme. Guy set up her own production company, Solax, in New York and with her husband built a studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. After a period of critical and financial success, the couple's fortunes declined when Thomas Alva Edison's trust hindered film production in the East coast, and they eventually shut down the studio in 1919. Although her husband secured work directing films for several major Hollywood studios, Guy was never able to secure any directorial jobs there, never made a film again, most of her films were lost, some were credited to other film directors, and she did no receive recognition for her pioneering work in France and the United States. She returned to France in 1922 after her divorce from Blaché, and in 1964 returned to the U.S. and lived in Mahwah, New Jersey - not far from where her original studios were - with her daughter, where she died in 1968.- Director
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Alain Resnais was born on 3 June 1922 in Vannes, Morbihan, France. He was a director and editor, known for Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Same Old Song (1997) and My American Uncle (1980). He was married to Sabine Azéma and Florence Malraux. He died on 1 March 2014 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France.- Actor
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Mathieu Kassovitz was born on 3 August 1967 in Paris, France. He is an actor and director, known for Amélie (2001), La haine (1995) and The Fifth Element (1997).- Director
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Admirers have always had difficulty explaining Éric Rohmer's "Je ne sais quoi." Part of the challenge stems from the fact that, despite his place in French Nouvelle Vague (i.e., New Wave), his work is unlike that of his colleagues. While this may be due to the auteur's unwillingness to conform, some have argued convincingly that, in truth, he has remained more faithful to the original ideals of the movement than have his peers. Additionally, plot is not his foremost concern. It is the thoughts and emotions of his characters that are essential to Rohmer, and, just as one's own states of being are hard to define, so is the internal life of his art. Thus, rather than speaking of it in specific terms, fans often use such modifiers as "subtle," "witty," "delicious" and "enigmatic." In an interview with Dennis Hopper, Quentin Tarantino echoed what nearly every aficionado has uttered: "You have to see one of [his movies], and if you kind of like that one, then you should see his other ones, but you need to see one to see if you like it."
Detractors have no problem in expressing their displeasure. They use such phrases as "tedious like a classroom play," "arty and tiresome" and "donnishly talky." Gene Hackman, as jaded detective Harry Moseby in Night Moves (1975), delivered a now famous line that sums up these feelings: "I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry." Undeniably, his excruciatingly slow pace and apathetic, self-absorbed characters are hallmarks, and, at times, even his greatest supporters have made trenchant remarks in this regard. Said critic Pauline Kael, "Seriocomic triviality has become Rohmer's specialty. His sensibility would be easier to take if he'd stop directing to a metronome." In that his proponents will quote attacks on him, indeed Rohmer may be alone among directors. They revel in the fact that "nothing of consequence" happens in his pictures. They are mesmerized by the dense blocks of high-brow chatter. They delight in the predictability of his aesthetic. Above all, however, they are touched by the honesty of a man who, uncompromisingly, lays bear the human soul and "life as such."
Who is Eric Rohmer? Born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer on December 1, 1920 in Nancy, a small city in Lorraine, he relocated to Paris and became a literature teacher and newspaper reporter. In 1946, under the pen name Gilbert Cordier, he published his only novel, "Elizabeth". Soon after, his interest began to shift toward criticism, and he began frequenting Cinémathèque Français (founded by archivist Henri Langlois) along with soon-to-be New Wavers Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut. It was at this time that he adopted his pseudonym, an amalgam of the names of actor/director Erich von Stroheim and novelist Sax Rohmer (author of the Fu Manchu series.) His first film, Journal d'un scélérat (1950), was shot the same year that he founded "Gazette du Cinema" along with Godard and Rivette. The next year, Rohmer joined seminal critic André Bazin at "Cahiers du Cinema", where he served as editor-in-chief from 1956 to 1963. As Cahiers was an influential publication, it not only gave him a platform from which to preach New Wave philosophy, but it enabled him to propose revisionist ideas on Hollywood. An example of the latter was "Hitchcock, The First Forty-Four Films", a book on which he collaborated with Chabrol that spoke of Alfred Hitchcock in highly favorable terms.
Rohmer's early forays into direction met with limited success. By 1958, he had completed five shorts, but his sole attempt at feature length, a version of La Comtesse de Ségur's "Les Petites filles modèles", was left unfinished. With Sign of the Lion (1962), he made his feature debut, although it was a decade before he achieved recognition. In the interim, he turned out eleven projects, including three of his "Six contes moraux" (i.e., moral tales), films devoted to examining the inner states of people in the throes of temptation. The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963) and Suzanne's Career (1963) are unremarkable black-and-white pictures that best function as blueprints for his later output. They also mark the beginning of a business partnership with Barbet Schroeder, who starred in the former of the two. The Collector (1967), his first major effort in color, has been mistaken for a Lolita movie; on a deeper plane, it questions the manner in which one collects or rejects experience. Rohmer's first "hit" was My Night at Maud's (1969), which was nominated for two Oscars and won several international awards. It continues to be his best-known work. In it, on the eve of a proclaiming his love to Francoise, his future wife, the narrator spends a night with a pretty divorcée named Maud. Along with a friend, the two have a discussion on life, religion and Pascal's wager (i.e., the necessity of risking all on the only bet that can win.) Left alone with the sensual Maud, the narrator is forced to test his principles. The final parts in the series, Claire's Knee (1970) and Love in the Afternoon (1972) are mid-life crisis tales that cleverly reiterate the notion of self-restraint as the path to salvation.
"Comedies et Proverbs," Rohmer's second cycle, deals with deception. The Aviator's Wife (1981) is the story a naïve student who suspects his girlfriend of infidelity. In stalking her ex-lover and ultimately confronting her, we discover the levels on which he is deceiving himself. Another masterpiece is Pauline at the Beach (1983), a seaside film about adolescents' coming-of-age and the childish antics of their adult chaperones. Of the remaining installments, The Green Ray (1986) and Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987) are the most appealing. The director's last series is known as "Contes des quatre saisons" (i.e., Tales of the Four Seasons), which too presents the dysfunctional relationships of eccentrics. In place of the social games of "Comedies et Proverbs", though, this cycle explores the lives of the emotionally isolated. A Tale of Springtime (1990) and A Tale of Winter (1992) are the more inventive pieces, the latter revisiting Ma Nuit chez Maud's "wager." Just as his oeuvre retraces itself thematically, Rohmer populates it with actors who appear and reappear in unusual ways. The final tale, Autumn Tale (1998), brings together his favorite actresses, Marie Rivière and Béatrice Romand. Like "hiver," it hearkens back to a prior project, A Good Marriage (1982), in examining Romand's quest to find a husband.
Since 1976, Rohmer has made various non-serial releases. Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987) and Rendez-vous in Paris (1995), both composed of vignettes, are tongue-in-cheek morality plays that merit little attention. The lush costume drama The Marquise of O (1976), in contrast, is an excellent study of the absurd formalities of 18th century aristocracy and was recognized with the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes. His other period pieces, regrettably, have not been as successful. Perceval le Gallois (1978), while original, is a failed experiment in stagy Arthurian storytelling, and the beautifully dull The Lady and the Duke (2001) is equally unsatisfying for most fans of his oeuvre. Nonetheless, the director has demonstrated incredible consistency, and that he was able to deliver a picture of this caliber so late in his career is astounding. The legacy that this man has bestowed upon us rivals that of any auteur, with arguably as many as ten tours de force over the last four decades. Why, then, is he the least honored among the ranks of the Nouvelle Vague and among all cinematic geniuses?
Stories of Rohmer's idiosyncrasies abound. An ardent environmentalist, he has never driven a car and refuses to ride in taxis. There is no telephone in his home. He delayed the production of Ma Nuit chez Maud for a year, insisting that certain scenes could only be shot on Christmas night. Once, he requested a musical score that could be played at levels inaudible to viewers. He refers to himself as "commercial," yet his movies turn slim profits playing the art house circuit. Normally, these are kinds of anecdotes that would endear a one with the cognoscenti. His most revealing quirk, however, is that he declines interviews and shuns the spotlight. Where Hitchcock, for instance, was always ready to talk shop, Rohmer has let his films speak for themselves. He is not worried about WHAT people think of them but THAT, indeed, they think.
It would be dangerous to supplant the aforementioned "je ne sais quoi" with words. Without demystifying Rohmer's cinema, still there are broad qualities to which one may point. First, it is marked by philosophical and artistic integrity. Long before Krzysztof Kieslowski, Rohmer came up with the concept of the film cycle, and this has permitted him to build on his own work in a unique manner. A devout Catholic, he is interested in the resisting of temptation, and what does not occur in his pieces is just as intriguing as what occurs. Apropos to the mention of his spirituality is his fascination with the interplay between destiny and free will. Some choice is always central to his stories. Yet, while his narrative is devoid of conventionally dramatic events, he shows a fondness for coincidence bordering on the supernatural. In order to maintain verisimilitude, then, he employs more "long shots" and a simpler, more natural editing process than his contemporaries. He makes infrequent use of music and foley, focusing instead on the sounds of voices. Of these voices, where his narrators are male (and it is ostensibly their subjective experience to which we are privy), his women are more intelligent and complex than his men. Finally, albeit deeply contemplative, Rohmer's work is rarely conclusive. Refreshingly un-Hollywood, rather than providing an escape from reality, it compels us to face the world in which we live.- Director
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Although François Truffaut has written that the New Wave began "thanks to Rivette," the films of this masterful French director are not well known. Rivette, like his "Cahiers du Cinéma" colleagues Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer, did graduate to filmmaking but, like Rohmer, was something of a late bloomer as a director. He made two shorts (At the Four Corners (1949) and The Quadrille (1950), starring Jean-Luc Godard); in the mid-1950s he served as an assistant to Jean Renoir and Jacques Becker; and in 1958 he was, along with Chabrol, the first of the five to begin production on a feature-length film. Without the financial benefit of a producer, Rivette took to the streets with his friends, a 16mm camera, and film stock purchased on borrowed money. It was only, however, after the commercial success of Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959), Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and Godard's Breathless (1960) that the resulting film, the elusive, intellectual, and somewhat lengthy (135 minutes) Paris Belongs to Us (1961), saw its release in 1960. In retrospect, Rivette's debut sketched out the path which all his subsequent films would follow; PARIS NOUS APPARTIENT was a monumental undertaking for the critic-turned-director, with some 30 actors (including Chabrol, Godard and Jacques Demy), almost as many locations, and an impenetrably labyrinthine narrative. His next film, the considerably more commercial The Nun (1966), was an adaptation of the Diderot novel which Rivette had staged in 1963. The least characteristic of all his features, it was also his first and only commercial success, becoming a succèss de scandal when the government blocked its release for a year. Rivette's true talents first made themselves visible during the fruitful period, 1968-74. During this time he directed the 4-hour Mad Love (1969), the now legendary 13-hour Out 1 (1971) (made for French TV in 1970 but never broadcast; edited to a 4-hour feature and retitled Out 1: Spectre (1972)), and the 3-hour Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), his most entertaining and widely seen picture. In these three films, Rivette began to construct what has come to be called his "House of Fiction"--an enigmatic filmmaking style influenced by the work of Louis Feuillade and involving improvisation, ellipsis and considerable narrative experimentation. Unfortunately, Rivette seems to have no place in contemporary cinema. On the one hand, his work is considered too inaccessible for theatrical distribution; on the other, although his revolutionary theories have influenced figures such as Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet and Chantal Akerman, he is deemed too commercial to be accepted by the underground cinema; he still employs a narrative and uses "name" actors such as Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, Anna Karina and Maria Schneider. Since CÉLINE AND JULIE, Rivette's career has been as mysterious as one of his plots. In 1976 he received an offer to make a series of four films, "Les Filles du Feu." Duelle (1976), the first entry, received such negative response that the second, Noroît (1976)--which some critics call his greatest picture--was held from release. The final two installments (one of which was due to star Leslie Caron and Albert Finney) were never filmed. The 1980s proved no kinder. He made five films, but only one of them, Love on the Ground (1984), opened in the US (it received disastrous reviews). Although he continues to be an innovative and challenging artist, Rivette has failed to find the type of audience that has contributed to the commercial success of his New Wave compatriots.- Director
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Jacques Feyder was born on 21 July 1885 in Ixelles, Brabant, Belgium. He was a director and writer, known for Carnival in Flanders (1935), Le grand jeu (1934) and Fahrendes Volk (1938). He was married to Françoise Rosay. He died on 24 May 1948 in Rive-de-Prangins, Switzerland.- Writer
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Catherine Breillat is a Paris based filmmaker and writer who became famous for her distinctively personal films on sexuality, gender trouble and sibling rivalry. Accused of being a "porno auteuriste", Breillat allowed for an unbiased view of sexuality and extended the language of mainstream movies. She is also a best-selling novelist and wrote her first novel, L'Homme Facile, at the age of 17. Breillat acted in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972) and wrote the screenplay for Maurice Pialat's movie Police (1985) . Since her first own film A Real Young Girl (1976), which was released 23 years after its shooting, Breillat explored critically as well as in an innovative way the perceptions imposed on female sexuality, related family and coming of age issues.- Director
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Costa-Gavras was born on 12 February 1933 in Loutra-Iraias, Greece. He is a director and writer, known for Z (1969), Missing (1982) and Amen. (2002). He has been married to Michèle Ray-Gavras since 1968. They have two children.- Director
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Jean Rollin was born on 3 November 1938 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. He was a director and writer, known for The Night of the Hunted (1980). He was married to Simone Rollin. He died on 15 December 2010 in Paris, France.- Director
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Claude Chabrol was born on 24 June 1930 in Paris, France. He was a director and writer, known for Le Beau Serge (1958), La Cérémonie (1995) and Story of Women (1988). He was married to Aurore Chabrol, Stéphane Audran and Agnès Goute. He died on 12 September 2010 in Paris, France.- Writer
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Francis Veber was born on 28 July 1937 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France. He is a writer and director, known for Le Dîner de Cons (1998), The Birdcage (1996) and Ruby & Quentin (2003). He has been married to Françoise Veber since 11 January 1964. They have two children.- Director
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Bertrand Tavernier was the son of Geneviève (Dumond) and René Tavernier, who was a publicist, writer, and president of the French PEN club. He was a law student that preferred write film criticisms. He also wrote a few books about American movies. Then his first film won a few awards in France and abroad and established his reputation.- Director
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The films of Claire Denis frequently explore the fragile connections between people and the ways in which the most seemingly inconsequential relationship can have life-changing effects. At the heart of Denis' cinema is a fascination with the delights and difficulties of belonging and otherness, the gravity and gift of foreignness. Often revolving around reactions to the intrusion of the other, be it a stranger or foreigner, Denis' films insist on the vital necessity of the unusual to coexist within the "normal" world. In films such as I Can't Sleep (1994) and Nénette and Boni (1996), Denis captures the mercurial and instant shifts in tone, from the pleasurably sensual to the menacing or the simply unaccountable, caused by the intrusion of the strange into the fabric of the everyday. In Denis' films one often feels that all is well even as worlds collide and collapse or, conversely, that a grave challenge underlies the seemingly calm moments. While Denis' childhood in French colonial Africa is reflected most directly in the African setting shared by her debut feature Chocolat (1988) and best-known film, Beau Travail (1999), this encounter with the intimacies and injustices of colonialism resounds throughout much of her work. Also shaping Denis' unique vision are the apprenticeships she served, just out of film school, under a variety of renowned directors, including Jacques Rivette, Wim Wenders, Dusan Makavejev and Jim Jarmusch - an eclectic company that is itself suggestive of the unique juxtaposition of careful craft and seeming casualness within Denis' work. Denis has often spoken of her shock as a young woman at discovering the novels of Faulkner that have exerted such a major influence over postwar French cinema. For Denis, Faulkner "was a plunge into the senses, into terror and the pain of his characters." These words describe Denis' films as well. But whatever terror and pain her characters may sometimes experience is outmeasured by the depths of Denis' deep affection for them and by her curiosity in their experiences of pleasure as well as fear. Even in the unsettling Trouble Every Day (2001), the not-infrequent catastrophes in Denis' films provoke a sense of wonder at, and even delight in, the sheer weight of existence.- Producer
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Claude Berri was born on 1 July 1934 in Paris, France. He was a producer and actor, known for Jean de Florette (1986), Germinal (1993) and The Two of Us (1967). He was married to Sylvie Gautrelet and Anne-Marie Rassam. He died on 12 January 2009 in Paris, France.- Writer
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Born an illegitimate son of a wealthy physician, Abel Flamant, and a working class mother, Francoise Perethon. He was raised by his mother and her boyfriend, who later became her husband, Adolphe Gance. Pressured by his parents, he began his working career as a lawyer's clerk in hopes of achieving a prosperous career in law. But his passion for the theatre lured him to the stage and at 19 he made his stage debut in Brussels. Within a year, after returning to Paris, he made his screen debut as an actor in Moliere (1909). He made other film appearances in minor roles as well as taking a crack at screen-writing.
Living in poverty during this period in his life, he suffered from starvation and tuberculosis. But he regained strength enough to form a production company in 1911, and made his debut as a director that same year with La Digue (1911). However, like the rest of his early films, it was unsuccessful and as a consequence, he returned to the stage with a five-hour long play, Victoire de Samothrace, which he wrote himself. It was due to be a success with Sarah Bernhardt in the lead role, but the sudden outbreak of WWI canceled the premiere.
Due to his ill health he was kept out of most of the war. During this time he managed to achieve a profitable status at the Film d'Arte company as a director. He turned out such successful films as Mater Dolorosa (1917) and La Dixieme Symphonie (1918), but he gained a reputation at Film d'Arte as a wild experimentalist - using such outlandish techniques for the time as close-ups and dolly shots. As a consequence, he was frequently at odds with the management. At the point of being one of the most well known film directors in France, he entered the tail end of WWI. He was discharged shortly after due to mustard gas poisoning. But he requested that he be redrafted so that he could shoot on-location battle scenes for his latest idea for a film J'accuse! (1919). The three-hour long, triangular melodrama about the "futility of war" became a box-office smash all over Europe. It was Europe's first fictional film to show authentic footage of the catastrophes of war. Being an experimentalist, he employed a rapid cutting technique that is said to have influenced such Russian filmmakers as Sergei Eisenstein and Pudovkin.
During the making of his next film, The Wheel (1923), he and his second wife, Ida Danis, fell ill with the flu. Although he recovered and worked on the film in stages, his wife did not - she died shortly before the film's release. Grieved by death of his wife and friend, actor Severin Mars, who starred in many of his films, he fled Europe and sailed to America. The trip turned out to be a nationwide promotion of I Accuse. He recalls that he did not like the Hollywood filmmaking system and refused an offer from MGM to direct for a hefty sum. The happiest moment was D.W. Griffith's praise of I Accuse at a screening in New York.
Returning to France, Gance released the final cut of La Roue to much acclaim, especially for its montage sequence. His most important and outstanding film is Napoleon (1927). Considered to be a dictionary of all the techniques of the silent film era and an introduction to some techniques to come. It was shot using a three-camera panoramic process that involves the use of three projectors and a curved windscreen to create a deep, vast panoramic look. A couple thousand extras were used to fill the shots. Being the experimentalist that he was, he shot scenes in color, more than a decade before Hollywood would make The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939) in color, and in 3-D. But he decided against incorporating them into the film in fear that they would jar the audience's attention. The film received a standing ovation the night of its premiere at the Paris Opera. It was then shown only in 8 European cities due to the expensive and technical apparatus and large size theatre needed to project the film. In the US, MGM purchased the distribution rights and elected not to show the film using the three projector windscreen equipment, claiming that it would interfere with the introduction of sound. Nonetheless, that doesn't explain why MGM decided to drastically cut the film and rearrange it. As a consequence, the general release in the US was a not a success, audiences laughed at the film and critics panned it. It was the last film of Gance's career that was to possess that magnitude of creativeness. His sound films were mainly done for studios, where he lacked the ability to be creative. He would return to Napoleon a couple times in his career. In 1934 he added stereophonic sound effects to the original film using a Pictographe. He had criticized film historians throughout the rest of his life for not giving his film Napoleon (1927) the attention it deserves. Finally, British director Kevin Brownlow spent two decades doing the arduous task of putting the film back together in its original format. It was first screened in London using the three projector format with a score composed and conducted by Carl Davis in 1979. Francis Ford Coppola produced the screenings at the Radio City Hall in the US, in 1981 to much acclaim. His father Carmine Coppola, composed and conducted the score in the US. Finally, Napoleon (1927) and its director received the respect they deserve.- Director
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Georges Méliès was a French illusionist and film director famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema.
Méliès was an especially prolific innovator in the use of special effects, popularizing such techniques as substitution splices, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color.
His films include A Trip to the Moon (1902) and An Impossible Voyage (1904), both involving strange, surreal journeys somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films.
Méliès died of cancer on 21 January 1938 at the age of 76.
In 2016, a Méliès film long thought lost, A Wager Between Two Magicians, or, Jealous of Myself (1904), was discovered in a Czechoslovak film archive.- Director
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Screenwriter and director Maurice Tourneur was born Maurice Thomas in the Parisian suburb of Belleville on February 2, 1873, the son of a jewelry merchant. He was trained and employed as a graphic designer and a magazine illustrator as a young man. After serving in a French artillery unit in northern Africa, he became an assistant to sculptor Auguste Rodin and later to muralist Amélie Puvis de Chavanne before deciding to change his life along with the changing century and make a new life in the theater.
Tourneur's younger siblings were part of the theatrical establishment--his sister was an actress and his brother a theater manager--so it was not as preposterous a shift in avocation as it might seem. After haunting the theaters of Paris, paying for cheap seats to soak up as much theater as he could, Tourneur became an actor in 1900 with a small troupe on the outskirts of Paris. His salary was 90 francs a month, the equivalent of about $15. Now a professional, he took the stage name "Maurice Tourneur". After learning the stage ropes, he joined the company of the great tragedienne Rejane for a South American tour. He later was a member of stage director Andre Antoine's company.
He married Fernande Petit in 1904, and they had a son, Jacques Tourneur (1904-1977), who would, like his father, become a film director of note. Maurice eventually worked as an actor and set designer for the Theatre de la Renaissance in Paris. In 1911, after having acted in and directed over 400 stage productions, he left the theater for the film industry, following his friend Emile Chautard into the new medium. Starting as an assistant to Chautard, Tourneur had visual arts experience surpassed by few in the nascent "7th Art," the cinema. After working as an assistant director at Societe Francaise des Films et Cinematographes Éclair, he was quickly promoted to director and made films with leading French stars. The subject of his first French silent films was often a gamin or orphan seeking love and shelter.
He had a good command of English from touring in the UK as an actor, and in 1914 the film company Éclair, intent on expanding its US market share, transferred Tourneur to America to manage its studio at Fort Lee, NJ, after a March 17, 1914, fire destroyed the main studio building and the company's negatives. Éclair American Co. went into business in Fort Lee, America's first "Hollywood", in 1911 with a studio designed by Éclair's French architects that incorporated the most modern theories of movie studio design. The studio complex consisted of glass-covered shooting stages with administrative offices, a development laboratory, workshops, scenery storage facilities and dressing rooms. Éclair American signed a distribution deal with the new New Jersey-based Universal Film Manufacturing Co. of Carl Laemmle, whose future production chief, Irving Thalberg, would later clash with Tourneur at MGM. Éclair American mostly produced shorts, but increasingly moved into feature production, keeping in line with the general evolution of the industry, and since Tourneur had experience in directing features, it was only natural that the company hired him.
In 1915 Tourneur moved over to World Film, also headquartered in Ft. Lee. World had been established the year before to import foreign-made features, which dominated American screens until the middle of the 1910s, and to distribute the movies of the newly established feature-film companies associated with producer Lewis J. Selznick, David O. Selznick's father. In a familiar pattern of that time, Selznick created Equitable Pictures and signed Vitagraph star Clara Kimball Young to his company. Selznick then merged with Shubert Pictures--Shubert Theatrical Co.'s movie production company--and Peerless Pictures, the movie production company created by motion picture raw-film-stock magnate Jules Brulatour.
World Pictures, now under Selznick's control, released movies produced by Equitable, Peerless, Shubert Pictures and other independent companies. Movie production was centered at the Peerless Studio in Ft. Lee, built in 1914, and at the Paragon Studio, built in 1916. Gradually World began to dominate the companies whose movies it distributed. Tourneur was the best filmmaker on the lot, whose other employees included Josef von Sternberg (who worked as a film cutter) and Frances Marion, the future Oscar-winning screenwriter.
Tourneur quickly rose to become a major director in the American movie industry, proving to be one of the more innovative pioneers in the development of the narrative film. Adept at using the latest technology to give his pictures a greater visual appeal, he earned critical acclaim and popular success. Tourneur was credited with bringing "stylization" to the American screen through his mastery of set design and lighting. His primary concern, however, was story: "Show the people anything, but show them something," he declared in a May 1920 interview with "Motion Picture Magazine". "This can be either funny or dramatic, but there must be something."
Tourneur opposed the new star system because he felt that a good story could not be told through one character; he also believed that the ideal of the "gleaming personality" of the star promulgated by motion pictures was false, a perversion of life as it actually is lived. Tourneur was more interested in developing a means to convey psychological effects than emphasizing physical action. In this he was opposed to the then-dominant pre-Konstantin Stanislavski acting theories, rooted in the theater, that held that dialogue must be accompanied by an appropriate physical gesture of the hands to underscore the feeling being conveyed by the actor in a scene. Physical action itself, the theory went, conveyed psychological meaning and emotion. It was said that film was born as a form of entertainment for the illiterate masses, and this style constituted a "universal language" that the talkies not only made obsolete, but absurd (one example of this style is the placement of the left-hand on the right forearm, a gesture that can be seen in silent films and was carried on by Harry Carey in his sound films. This was an elocutory gesture that signified fortitude, and would be understood by the silent film audience). Tourneur believed that this telegraphic shorthand needed to be replaced. The new Soviet cinema would show the way towards a greater psychological realism with the development of montage.
Tourneur's film production unit had coalesced by 1915, and included Clarence Brown, the future six-time Oscar-nominated director who served as his assistant director and editor; director of photography John van den Broek and art director Ben Carré. The Tourneur unit produced a series of popular movies that successfully utilized both the new language of film--including close-ups and parallel action--and new technology, such as tracking shots and special effects. While Tourneur's work spanned many genres, a leitmotif in his oeuvre was the romantic skullduggery women were the victim of, or sometimes the perpetrator of, in the pursuit of love and happiness. Today we'd call the women victims of sexual harassment; in the 1910s, underhanded or unscrupulous predatory behavior was generally considered part of the exigencies of love, though Tourneur saw through the obfuscating facade. Reportedly, among directors, only the pictures of D.W. Griffith and Thomas H. Ince were more popular than the films of Maurice Tourneur. In an interview published in the July 3, 1915, issue of "The New York Clipper", Tourneur expressed the opinion that Griffith was supreme among movie directors. He also believed that the motion picture was the most significant development for education since the invention of the printing press. Still, he was obsessed with story--he stated that "nearly everything worthwhile in the pictures is an adaptation of a book, a play, a poem." Tourneur believed that the cinema needed to develop a new kind of author, a writer who would more naturalistically portray human nature and move the movies away from the simplistic Manichean machinations of plot towards a portrayal of human motivations and interactions that more closely caught the true balance of good and bad in human beings. He stated that "nearly everything worth while in the pictures is an adaptation of a book, a play, a poem."
The Tourneur oeuvre consistently displayed first-rate visuals that compensated for some of the dramatic weaknesses of the early narrative film, hampered as it was by dialogue constrained by the limitations of intertitles, and by a certain overwrought telegraphic performance style closer to elocution than what we now appreciate as acting. In many early films the narrative can be unintelligible to a modern audience, due to a lack of intertitles, as this style was expected to, and did, convey information to the contemporary audience, an audience more experienced with pantomime due to the need of performers and filmmakers to reach an audience that spoke a babble of languages. However, the demands of movies for this kind of signaling hampered its development as a mature medium of artistic expression. When Tourneur tried to bring the sophistication of Henrik Ibsen to the screen with A Doll's House (1918), it proved an aesthetic and box-office failure. As one critic noted, the felicities of Ibsen's drama could only be conveyed by language itself and the modulations of the human voice, not by stage business.
In the July 1918 edition of "Photoplay Magazine", Tourneur stated his contrary credo: "There is an odious fallacy that a great many people still believe, in regard to the moving picture. It is almost as widespread as that the cinema is in its infancy [Tourneur dated the invention of the motion picture to Eadweard Muybridge's experiments with multiple-exposure photography in 1878]. By that I mean the belief that we must give the public what it wants. To me, that is absurd. As absurd as if the fashion dictators should attempt to suit women's wishes in costumes. In reality, the opposite is the case, is it not?" Tourneur believed that the filmmaker's taste and preferences were essential to the creation of a motion picture, just as in the legitimate theater, the craft and art the director and actors applied to a written play infused it with life and meaning. The play was not the thing, Tourneur stated; one can always sit at home and read a play. It is the staging of the play that creates meaning, and it is the director's control over the photoplay that makes it an art rather than just a piece of commerce.
Tourneur rebelled against the prevalent attitude in the movie industry that the audience would automatically reject more poetic works. He believed that what was then called The Great War had infused the mass audience with a certain spirituality. Tourneur had faith that the audience would accept higher-quality, more intellectual works, and that the mass-market lowest-common-denominator paradigm of the film industry was false. However, he could make exceptions to his opposition to pandering to the audience; in an earlier interview published in the May 18, 1918, edition of "Exhibitors Trade Review", he believed that filmmakers had a patriotic duty to soothe the anxieties of the wartime audience.
"It is part of our duty as purveyors of entertainment to the great majority, to see to it that the public gets wholesome, optimistic and, if possible, amusing entertainment. It is up to the screen to sustain the spirits of the nation. Let us keep away from the morbid and gruesome and throw the tremendous power of the photoplay into the civilized world's war for democracy." But of course, this was parcel to his opinion that the motion picture had a great didactic function, and could be used to educate an audience (a generation later Tourneur would be confronted with the anxieties of quite a different audience, that of Occupied France).
"Directing motion pictures is merely capturing life," Tourneur stated in a piece he wrote on the art of directing for "Variety" (December 27, 1918). A director, as auteur, was born, not made. A movie director could not be trained, as a successful director had been born with the instincts to create a photoplay (a contemporary term Tourneur despised and urged the industry to jettison in favor of something new and more accurate to describe the motion picture). "Directing a picture presupposes the possession of dramatic instinct and artistic perception in the man entrusted with the transfer to the screen of the play of an author," he wrote.
The photoplay had developed into quite a different form from the staged play of the legitimate theater, and thus a different set of narrative tools was required to make a successful movie. The director had to work within the limits of movies, which were short in length, thus limiting his options for both creating and presenting drama. A director had to be an expert in finding, and using, some detail, that in the short period of time allowed him, would elucidate the characters, the conflicts, and themes of his film. Thus, the director had to be a great observer of human nature and character in order to master his medium.
Optimistic about the future, and relishing the opportunity to define the new medium, Tourneur created his own production company in 1918. He felt that American silent film actors were superior to their European counterparts. He believed that "America's Sweetheart," Mary Pickford, the Toronto native whom he directed in two hit films in 1917, was the world's best screen actress. He also touted stage actress Elsie Ferguson, his Nora Helmer, as a brilliant artist; they made four films together in 1917 and 1918. For her part Ferguson, who hated movies and had to be coaxed into them by generous offers from Paramount-Artcraft head Jesse L. Lasky, said that Tourneur was her favorite director, and that she was lucky to have had him direct her first film.
Tourneur became increasingly antagonistic to the star system that was becoming more important to the industry, and he resisted studio efforts to rein in directors (and their profligate spending) by the imposition of the central production system, in which formerly dominant directors had to answer to producers over aesthetic choices as well as budgets. At this point in his career his success at the box office gave him leeway to push the frontiers of his art. In addition to making popular movies, Tourneur became one of the most respected directors in America, but he experienced some trouble when he began to become more aesthetically enthusiastic.
Tourneur's heavily stylized The Blue Bird (1918), which featured unusual sets and costumes, was a precursor of the expressionist German cinema, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) (the Rejane company had put on the first production of "L'oisueau bleu" in 1911, the year its author, Maurice Maeterlinck, won the Nobel Prize and Tourneur left the legitimate stage for the soundstage. In 1924 Tourneur wrote an article about the superiority of film to the theater. "[M]otion pictures have reached greater artistic heights than the stage and will continue on--years in advance of the stage," he wrote). Another heavily stylized film, Prunella (1918), was as critically acclaimed as "The Blue Bird," but both failed at the box office, as the movie industry was not as able to support artistic visions as was the theater. Due to these economic considerations, Tourneur went back to a naturalistic style.
Tourneur scorned what he called "machine-made" commercial pictures, but he had to acknowledge the tyranny of the box-office. He believed that the failure of "Prunella" was the result of its rejection by provincial exhibitors, who did not believe their audiences would go for such "high-brow" fare. Lacking an advertising budget and marketing monies that would enable it to be showcased with a first-rate orchestral accompaniment, the picture failed, cold-bloodedly murdered by the philistine exhibitors. Tourneur believed that Griffith's hit Broken Blossoms (1919) would have failed, too, if he had not been backed by advertising and marketing muscle. He also believed that Cecil B. DeMille's Male and Female (1919), his adaptation of J.M. Barrie's play "The Admirable Crichton," would have flopped it he hadn't vulgarized it. He also scored Griffith for giving in to the exigencies of the marketplace by pandering to the audience and turning his back on art.
It was around this time that he gave up on his idea that movies should be used to educate the masses. In an interview published in November 1920, Tourneur told Truman B. Handy of "Motion Picture" that the forte of film was amusement: "I do not believe in using the screen as a way of teaching; we have the pulpit and the college. It may be a means of propaganda, but I do not intend to use it as such. Never!" His faith would be sorely tested under the Nazis 20 years later.
"I would rather starve and make good pictures," he wrote in 1920, "if I knew they were going to be shown, but to starve and make pictures which are thrown in the ashcan is above anybody's strength. As long as the public taste will oblige us to make what is very justly called machine-made stories, we can only bow and give them what they want."
Story, again, was essential if one was to subvert the exhibitors' and distributors' expectations of the box office and create something better than the "machine-made" moving picture. Tourneur had an affinity for literary adaptations, and his career collection of adaptations included Joseph Conrad's Victory (1919), Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1920), James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1920) and R.D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone (1922). He would later make a French version of Ben Jonson's play Volpone (1941).
By 1922 he came to the opinion that the future of the American film industry lay in Hollywood, not New York, though not without regret. In a February 1922 "Photoplay" article weighing the merits of California versus New York as a production locale, Tourneur came out in favor of California, since artistry was no longer a part of the moviemaking equation. To be intellectually stimulated and remain artistically fresh, New York would be the preferable production center, Tourneur declared. New York, like London, Paris and Vienna, stimulated the filmmaker toward developing fresh ideas and more ambitious projects. However, "[f]rom the material standpoint of facilities, costs, climate and the like there is no comparison; Los Angeles is vastly superior."
The next year he shot The Christian (1923), an adaptation of Hall Caine's novel, in Hollywood for Samuel Goldwyn, but within a few years he decided not to share his future with that of the West Coast. Though he apparently had no problems with the mercurial Goldwyn (who would bedevil William Wyler a decade later), the American movie industry had evolved into a business of which he disapproved. It was in Hollywood, under such men as Irving Thalberg, Darryl F. Zanuck and Hal B. Wallis, that the central producer and production chief became the dominant force in the film industry from the mid-'20s through the early 1950s. Hollywood became a place where directors were often pulled off one picture in the middle of a shoot to shoot scenes in another picture, shuffled around like the hired hands that they had become in the increasingly centralized industry.
Tourneur denounced the industry's reliance on realism in a February 4, 1923, interview with "The New York Telegraph" in a plea for a more artistic, impressionistic approach to making motion pictures. He felt that film finally had had succeeded in being able to convey psychological effects, and had even surpassed the stage in that respect, as it could use picture and montage to quickly convey a mental state that it would take "countless words" to put over in the theater. Tourneur believed that due to the literalness of the camera lens, which did not have the mediating eye of the visual artist, the movies had been too focused on action. However, film could be made into a plastic art that was manipulated by the director to bring out "the psychology of the drama--the mental action of the characters."
He elaborated: "The screen is a better medium than the dramatic stage for getting over psychological effects. We can drive ideas across. For instance, what better way is there to express corruption than to show a close-up of the check with which a man has bribed . . . The Goldwyn company agreed with me that you can get more to the spectators by showing a banging shutter, by indicating the howling of the wind, or the shrieking of a woman, than by numberless words. Motion pictures, first of all, should be impressionistic."
Later that year, in the July 1st edition of the same newspaper, Tourneur declared that the great motion pictures would be produced by the next generation, now that the pioneers had developed a new mode of expression. He stated his belief that the director, and not the producer, should be fully responsible for a motion picture production. "To relieve him of any of these responsibilities and to compel him to confine his efforts to adapting himself to the ideas of a half-dozen 'experts' will strike at the very foundation of successful pictures." He predicted that the meddling of producers would doom motion pictures' popularity with the mass audience as it would result in inferior movies that the movie-goers would reject.
It was just the type of interference that Tourneur warned about in 1923 that led to his quitting the American film industry. The last film he directed in the US was The Mysterious Island (1929), which he abandoned soon after the commencement of principal photography. Tourneur would not work under MGM's assigned production supervisor, so he quit the picture and repatriated himself to his native France in 1926, to make movies there and in Germany.
Tourneur was not welcomed back to France, since he was viewed as a draft dodger by many in a country in which 11% of the population had been killed or wounded in The Great War (Charles Chaplin had been similarly criticized by British hawks). During a visit to his homeland in 1921, some French journalists demanded that Tourneur not be allowed to return to the US. Jean-Louis Crozet of the periodical "Comoedia" denounced Tourneur for having spent 1914-18 in America, and thus avoiding military service in World War I, which claimed the lives of approximately 1.4 million French soldiers. Crozet accused the director of cowardice for having emigrated to America to "[save] his life, while so many of his compatriots lost theirs."
Tourneur made his second movie in Germany after leaving the US, The Ship of Lost Men (1929) ("Ship of Lost Men"), which starred Marlene Dietrich in one of her first important roles. His son Jacques--who would go on to become an important director in the US in the 1940s--served as Tourneur's assistant and editor on the film. Jacques would continue to assist his father on his shoots until the mid-'30s.
Divorced from his first wife in 1923, Maurice married actress Louise Lagrange (1898-1979), whom he met while shooting L'homme mystérieux (1933). During the Nazi occupation of France (1940-44) times were tough for French filmmakers who wouldn't collaborate with the Germans, and things were no different for Tourneur, the man who vowed in 1920 that he would never make propaganda films. Even the "sitzkrieg", or Phony War, period of September 1, 1939, to May 9, 1940, disrupted the cinema as actors and craftsmen were called up for military service. Tourneur's shooting of "Volpone" was interrupted, and did not resume production until March 23, 1940, less than two months before the Nazi invasion of May 10th. On June 22nd the brief Battle of France came to an end when World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain asked the Germans for an armistice. Part of the peace accord mandated the partition of France, with the northern part to remain under German domination and the capital of the new government, headed by Petain, to be in Vichy. Vichy France, as the collaborationist government was known, also was to obey Germany in matters of cultural and racial policy.
On November 2, 1940, new regulations for the French movie industry were issued. All movie professionals were required to carry an identity card, except for Jews, who were not allowed one. At the end of the year 'Jean Renoir' (I)' emigrated to the US and was given a contract by 20th Century-Fox. The great actor Jean Gabin also made it to America and a contract with Universal, appearing in his first American film, Moontide (1942), opposite Ida Lupino in 1942.
French movie theaters were required to show Nazi propaganda movies, in accordance with Germany's policies towards all occupied countries. In 1940 Nazi filmmaker Veit Harlan turned Lion Feuchtwanger's novel "Jew Suss" into a vicious anti-Semitic German-language film, the notorious Jud Süß (1940), the climax of which justifies pogroms against the Jewish people. When the film was released in Paris on February 14, 1941, the reaction of the French audience was very positive. On June 30 of that year the great French filmmaker Abel Gance was arraigned before the head of the French movie industry for the "crime" of being Jewish, and was required to prove his Aryan origins. He fled to Spain, not returning from exile until late 1945.
In September 1941 German censorship was enforced over French movies, and on the last day of the year, the Propaganda Division issued six new statutes, one of which banned Jews from the movie industry. The power to "green-light" French movies was reserved for the German High Command, and a new studio was created, Continental Productions, which was a subsidiary of Germany's state-owned UFA, headed by the German Alfred Greven and financed by French capital. The company, a.k.a. Continental Films, became the most important French movie production company during the Occupation.
By January 1942 film receipts were up by 68% over the previous year. A month later Jews and foreigners were forbidden from working in the film industry under a pseudonym, and on October 15th all American and English films were banned in France. French cartoons began to become popular early that year, possibly a sign of escapism, or of the indigenous industry's desire not to make propaganda for the enemy, and of the audience's desire not to be exposed to it. In 1943, fearing an Allied invasion from England, the Germans banned the filming of movies on the French coast. On January 15, 1944, reacting to the release of Vautrin the Thief (1943), the newspaper "Le Pilori" denounced beloved French character actor Michel Simon as a Jew, and wrote, "The cinema has condemned us to seeing the base, disgusting, revolting face that Michel Simon gives to 'Vautrin'." However, the mood in France, as the Allied invasion grew more imminent, began to change.
The Committee for the Liberation of the Cinema was an active element of the Maquis, which was the name given to the Resistance, publishing an underground newspaper, "L'Ecran francais". The Committee organized resistance within the film industry controlled by the Nazis and their collaborators, and coordinated insurrections and the "liberation" of many filmmaking facilities during the time of the Allied invasion of France, which began on June 6th. On July 18, 1944, "L'Ecran francais" published an article "Toward a Cinema with Clean Hands", declaring that collaborators with the Germans would not be tolerated in the liberated French film industry (in 1946 actor Robert Le Vigan was sentenced to 10 years at hard labor, and all his belongings were confiscated, for openly collaborating with the Germans and broadcasting anti-Semitic propaganda on the radio. The French made a distinction between those who had to cooperate with the Germans due to economic considerations and those who intellectually cooperated with the Nazis and propagated their ideology).
Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944, three days after film curator and cinema buff Henri Langlois held the first showing of Gone with the Wind (1939) in Paris at his Cinematheque française. The movie theaters of Paris had not yet been opened, but that didn't stop Langlois; at that point, his regular exhibition of movies had been suspended for a year. Marcel Carné's classic Children of Paradise (1945), shot during the Occupation, had its gala premiere on March 9, 1945. It originally had been scheduled to be shot at the Victorine studios in Nice in mid-August 1943, but the production was interrupted when the company was ordered back to Paris after the Allied invasion of Sicily. On April 14, 1945, all the theaters and entertainment venues in Paris were shut for the day to pay respect to the late US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died two days earlier.
During the Occupation the Germans had encouraged French filmmakers to maintain their high production standards in order to create more effective propaganda and to create superior product to soothe the anxieties of French movie-goers. However, those who were less cooperative had to get along with less. While Tourneur continued to direct under the Occupation, he was forced to use the ends of reels of raw film stock to shoot his pictures.
Maurice Tourneur is a character in Bertrand Tavernier's 2002 film about the French film industry under Vichy, Safe Conduct (2002) ("Safe Conduct"), the title of which refers both to the after-curfew pass filmmakers were issued due to the odd shooting hours of the film industry and also to the movie business' laissez-faire atmosphere during the occupation, which included hiding and utilizing Jewish film professionals who, of course, could not be credited. The film's story deals with French screenwriter Jean Aurenche, a rogue who did not want to work for the Nazis, and Jean Devaivre, an assistant director involved with the Resistance. Tavernier was inspired to make his three-hour epic by the experiences of his father René Tavernier, an editor and screenwriter confronted with the same dilemma as Jean Aurenche, characterized by his son as, "[W]hat can you write in a period of such censorship under a regime you despise?"
Tavernier believes that Americans can understand the dilemma if they equate French filmmakers during the Nazi occupation with American filmmakers under McCarthyism. Of the question, "'[H]ow can you work for a German company without compromising yourself?' It's very simple. I say to the American critic, just replace the German element with Senator McCarthy [Red-baiting Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy] and everything will be clear!"
The great paradox of the French film industry under the Occupation, which thrived despite the wartime shortages and terror directed by the Nazis towards the French population, is that French filmmakers working for the German-financed and -controlled Continental, the most powerful studio in France, maintained a good deal of independence. Unlike newspapers and book publishing and radio broadcasting, which were tightly controlled, the Germans allowed French filmmakers more latitude in order to create entertaining movies to distract the French populace. Thus, many French filmmakers were able to incorporate allegories and parables alluding to the Occupation. According to Tavernier, of the approximately 30 feature films made at Continental between 1940 and 1944, most have a kind of integrity that belies their ostensible ends as Nazi and Pétainist propaganda. "That's the first act of resistance," he claims.
Aurenche and René Tavernier hated Vichy and the indigenous intellectual collaborators with the regime, and Aurenche allegedly used coding in his Continental screenplays to defy the Nazis (director Martin Scorsese, citing the American directors of the 1940s and 1950s, calls this process "smuggling," introducing themes on the sly beneath the ken of studio owners and censors). Bernard Tavernier believes it was the directors, and not the screenwriters, who should be blamed for the sins of the Vichy cinema and the postwar, pre-Nouvelle vague bourgeois cinema, although that statement seems to indicate some kind of counter-Oedipal complex. His argument about McCarthyism smacks of a relevance that many Americans might find dismaying, as the French screenwriters of Vichy he lionizes were defying a foreign power, whereas many of the American screenwriters initially persecuted by McCarthyism were secret members of the Communist Party, accused of putting in coded messages for a foreign power with which the United States was locked in a Cold War.
Actually, the real nexus of the two groups' experiences can be summed up by the dilemma that Robert Sklar, in his book "Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of the American Movies," posits as a struggle "over issues that had agitated American culture ever since movies first appeared: Whom makes the product? Who runs the show? Who decides what the show should say?" It was a battle Tourneur joined in America, and then quit in 1926 when the machine-made movie philistines won the war.
Maurice Tourneur and other cine-artists in America, wanting a more artistic, expressionistic type of film that would offer something beyond the simple lowest-common-denominator cultural dualities of good and evil that the money-men insisted was all that the box office could bear, had to resort to "smuggling" in their own themes, their own bits of telling detail that would illuminate the psychological motivations of characters and audience alike. Vichy France and McCarthyite America were no different in kind (if not degree) in that the money-men, the producers, had always constrained the creative people, who resulted to subterfuges to make the films they wanted, whether in Paris or Hollywood. Even Sergei Eisenstein, the great Soviet filmmaker, survived the terrors of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union only to have his soul crushed again and again by a tyranny that makes the regimes of the classic Hollywood mogul much lamented by the creative talent laughable in comparison.
In Vichy France a filmmaker could be tortured or shot for not hewing to the Nazi line; while it is true that many an uncooperative leftist wound up in jail for defying the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee, the damage for those who did not defy but did not cooperate was mostly limited to the loss of high-paying jobs and the psychological torment of being abandoned by friends and losing one's career. However, the challenge to both Vichy screenwriter and Hollywood screenwriter in what Lillian Hellman called the "Scoundrel Time" was the same: If one could not compromise, if one could not tailor one's beliefs to fit the fashion of the times, one could not work. So, in this sense, there is a similarity as suggested by Tavernier, but like many paradoxes of Anglo-French relations, Tavernier's argument doesn't completely add up; it does, however, help elucidate the tough spot and paradoxical milieu that movie-makers like Maurice Tourneur found themselves in. The Devaivre character, in Tavernier's film, has to take over directing a movie from Tourneur when the director goes into shock upon hearing that his wife has been taken prisoner by the Germans.
In 1942 Maurice Tourneur directed his first French horror film, a genre in which his son Jacques thrived in the US during the war. Carnival of Sinners (1943) (released as "Carnival of Sinners" in the US and "The Devil's Hand" in the UK) is an adaptation of Gérard de Nerval's 1832 short story "La main enchantée" ("The Enchanted Hand"). The film is about a failed artist's pact with the Devil, a Faustian dilemma that would have resonated with audiences in Occupied France. The artist, Roland, buys the severed though-still-alive left hand of a man, a grisly talisman owned by the Devil himself, from the restaurateur Mélisse, who informs Roland that in the future, he can only sell off the charm at a loss.
Under the threat of eternal damnation, Roland seals his Faust-pact, with the proviso from the Devil that Roland can return the charm--at a price. The catch is, the longer he keeps the charm, the higher the price is, as it doubles each day. Tourneur cast a frail and harmless-looking actor as his Mephistopheles, a man who looks like a small-town bailiff and effectively doubles as a Vichy civil servant. Despite the unprepossessing look of the Devil, Tourneur created a sense of fear by emphasizing the consequences of the Faust-pact rather than the Devil's power. Tourneur had become a master of psychological filmmaking.
Roland becomes a great success, but at the cost of his individual identity as the charm makes him a different person. In a meeting with previous "owners" of the hand, Roland discovers that he is the last in a succession of men who took advantage of the charm, which links him to a history that ostensibly is not his own, but in fact is. The hand binds him to the first owner, a monk who refused to use his artistic talents for the glory of god, and it is under the monk's name, Maximus Léo, that Roland creates the art that ensures his fame and fortune, with the caveat that the expression of the hand is not his own.
He is done in by the vanity and greed of his mistress, when she purloins money from his safe to buy herself a luxury, money that he intended to use to payoff the Devil. He no longer will be able to buy his way out of the Faust-pact, and save his soul. At the end of the story, he is the one who now owns the hand and must pay the debt for all the previous owners who attempted to profit from it. Although he resents his fate, he must bear the responsibility for his collaboration with the Devil, and for the collaborations of the others who came before him. (Vichy government propaganda held that the French people brought on the Occupation themselves to make them accept it as their just desserts.)
Despite the travails of Occupied France and the German-dominated industry, Tourneur managed to create a classic psychological horror film. If Martin Scorsese and Tavernier's theme of smuggling is correct, then "La Main du diable" and other horror films made during the Occupation used the genre to smuggle unacceptable themes past the censors. French films made during the Occupation never directly refer to the military and political situation, but they do convey the anxiety and paranoia, indeed, the horror and fear of losing one's soul via collaboration, felt by the Occupied French.
In the July 3, 1915. "New York Clipper" interview, it was reported that "M. Tourneur's ambition is to produce strong and appealing detective stories. He believes they interest the greatest number of people." Tourneur's movie-making career continued until 1949, when he lost a leg in a car accident. His interests were painting in oils and watercolors and reading. After his forced retirement from the cinema due to his disability, he occupied himself by translating English-language detective novels into French.
Maurice Tourneur died on August 4, 1961, in Paris, and was interred in the City of Lights' Père Lachaise Cemetery. As a filmmaker, posterity has praised Tourneur for the subtlety and lingering moods of his movies, particularly those in the mystery and fantasy genres. He was one of the few American directors to create a new aesthetic, which exerted a strong influence on Josef von Sternberg. His use of rectangular compositions in Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915) inspired Fritz Lang's The Spiders - Episode 1: The Golden Sea (1919), and may also have influenced the Japanese director Yasujirô Ozu.
Hollywood director Clarence Brown, who graduated from the University of Tennessee at age 19 with a double degree in engineering, credited Tourneur with making him a filmmaker. Within a few months of being hired, he was editing Tourneur's films, and by 1917 he was shooting parts of Tourneur's films (uncredited) himself. He learned from his mentor the power of lighting and composition, although he developed a more sympathetic approach to directing actors than his teacher. Brown told cinema historian Kevin Brownlow, "Tourneur was my God. I owe him every thing I've got in the world. For me, he was the greatest man who ever lived. If it hadn't been for him, I'd still be fixing automobiles." Brownlow reported that Brown had tears in his eyes when he made this confession.
The United States Library of Congress' National Film Registry, established to help preserve American films deemed "culturally significant," has two Tourneur films on its list, The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) and The Last of the Mohicans (1920).- Director
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He started off by making short films for television on which he was producer,screenwriter and cameraman. This was interrupted by military service in the army but only partly as he was put into the army film unit where he made over 100 films. Demobbed in 1960 he used family money for his first feature Le propre de l'homme (1961) which was a total flop. In '61 he started filming 'La Vie de Chateau' but was forced to close down after one week due to lack of finance. In 1964 he made L'amour avec des si (1964) which was a success in Sweden but a flop everywhere else. In 1963 his film Night Women (1964) had 40 minutes cut by the censor so it was never shown publicly. His film Une fille et des fusils (1965) was his first to recover production costs. In 1965 came his 5th completed film Les grands moments (1966) but he thought it so bad that he bought the film himself so that it would never be seen. Things changed round completely the following year with what became a classic - A Man and a Woman (1966) which won the 'Grand Prix at Cannes, an Oscar for Best Picture numerous other awards.- Director
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François Ozon was born on 15 November 1967 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for In the House (2012), 8 Women (2002) and Swimming Pool (2003).- Director
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René Clément was one of the leading French directors of the post-World War II era. He directed what are regarded as some of the greatest films of the time, such as The Battle of the Rails (1946), Forbidden Games (1952) and The Day and the Hour (1963). He was later almost forgotten as a director. He was back in public attention briefly when his epic Is Paris Burning? (1966) (with an all-star cast of famous actors) was released in 1966, but it was much criticized.
During the 1960s and 1970s Clement directed a number of unnoticed international productions, always with his usual brio and technical virtuosity. Indeed, what characterizes most of his films is how, even to serve sometimes very unexceptional scripts, the directing is always breathtakingly original, inventive, featuring technical virtuosity and the use of special effects. When a remarkable script is associated with these qualities, a film such as Forbidden Games (1952) is the result: the masterpiece of a lifetime. I think we can say that René Clément was one of the most unlucky talented filmmakers who existed, but unfortunate career choices damaged his legacy.
He died in March 1996.- Writer
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Olivier Assayas is a French film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is best know for his films Demonlover (2002), Something in the Air (2012), Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) and Personal Shopper (2016).
Assayas is the son of French director/screenwriter Raymond Assayas, alias Jacques Rémy.
His directorial debut was in the short film Copyright (1979).- Director
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Marcel Carné, the son of a cabinet maker, entered the movies as the assistant of Jacques Feyder. At the age of 25 he directed his first movie Jenny (1936). Colaborating with the writer Jacques Prévert, the decorator Alexandre Trauner, the musician and composer Maurice Jaubert and the actor Jean Gabin he became the great director of the pre-war era of the French cinema with the poetic realism style (e.g. Hotel du Nord (1938)). During the occupation of France by Nazi-Germany he worked in the zone of the government of Vichy making Children of Paradise (1945), a clear anti-Nazi parable and all time classic of French cinema. After having been confronted with a purge trial he went on filming but none of his later movies could catch up with his former works.- Writer
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Roger Vadim was born on 26 January 1928 in Paris, France. He was a writer and director, known for Barbarella (1968), The Game Is Over (1966) and No Sun in Venice (1957). He was married to Marie-Christine Barrault, Catherine Schneider, Jane Fonda, Annette Stroyberg and Brigitte Bardot. He died on 11 February 2000 in Paris, France.- Writer
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Bertrand Blier was born on 14 March 1939 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Seine [now Hauts-de-Seine], France. He is a writer and director, known for The Clink of Ice (2010), Too Beautiful for You (1989) and 1, 2, 3, Freeze (1993).- Writer
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His interest in films was stimulated by a meeting with King Vidor, who offered him employment in the US as actor and assistant director. However, he remained in France and became assistant to Jean Renoir, a friend of the family, during that director's peak period (1932-39). In 1934 he ventured briefly into independent production, co-directing with Pierre Prévert a short film, Pitiless Gendarme (1935). In 1935 he turned out a five-reeler, Tête de turc (1935), which he later refused to acknowledge as his.
In 1939 he began shooting a feature film, Cristobal's Gold (1940), but walked out after three weeks, leaving the film to be finished by Jean Stelli. In 1942, after a year in a German prisoner-of-war camp, he began his career as director. His entire output consisted of only 13 films, but they include some of the most artistically and technically substantial in French cinema. He is one of the few Old Guard directors done honor by the New Wave, which reveres him for his masterpieces, the atmospheric period love story Casque d'Or (1952) and the superb prison escape drama The Hole (1960), and also for his lesser films, such charming love tales as Antoine & Antoinette (1947) and Edward and Caroline (1951), in which he vividly depicts French social milieus through careful attention to background. His Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), a gangster film distinguished for its detailed action and penetration of character, exerted considerable influence on subsequent série noire French films. He was less successful with such commercial ventures as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1954), which was dominated by Fernandel, and Montparnasse 19 (1958), a biographical sketch of the last years in the life of Modigliani. Becker's widow is French stage and screen actress Françoise Fabian (b. Michèle Cortès de Leone y Fabianera, 1932, Algiers). He was the father of director Jean Becker.- Director
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Marcel Ophuls (actually Marcel Oppenheimer) is the son of the famous German film maker Max Ophüls. He spent his formative years in Hollywood, briefly served with a U.S. Army theatrical unit in Japan in 1946 and then attended the University of California, Berkely. In 1950, already a naturalized French citizen since 1938, he moved to Paris to study philosophy at the Sorbonne. He dropped out, however, once the opportunity arose to work in the film industry as an assistant to Anatole Litvak and Julien Duvivier. After collaborating on his father's film Lola Montès (1955), Ophuls met the French actress Jeanne Moreau who agreed to put up the money for his own project, the detective comedy Banana Peel (1963), a Franco-Italian-German co-production, starring Moreau and Jean-Paul Belmondo. It was aptly described by a reviewer as "a cheerful and inventive film with some inspired dialogue". His next venture, the thriller Faites vos jeux, mesdames (1965), was rather less successful.
Ophuls then worked for three years on The Sorrow and the Pity (1969), a controversial documentary which criticised French collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. A further anti-war documentary, The Memory of Justice (1976), ran into legal problems and bankrupted Ophuls. After a four year hiatus, much of it spent on the lecture circuit, he resumed making documentaries and won an Academy Award for Hôtel Terminus (1988), the story of Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, from innocent childhood to war criminal. Ophuls has served on the board of the French Filmmakers Society. His more recent documentaries have examined investigative journalism and the impact of Germany's reunification.- Director
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Jean Epstein was born on 25 March 1897 in Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire [now Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland]. He was a director and writer, known for The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), Mauprat (1926) and Le lion des Mogols (1924). He died on 2 April 1953 in Paris, France.- Director
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Jacques Demy was born on 5 June 1931 in Pontchâteau, Loire-Atlantique, France. He was a director and writer, known for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and A Room in Town (1982). He was married to Agnès Varda. He died on 27 October 1990 in Paris, France.- Writer
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Ms. Duras was born in southern Vietnam and lost her father at age 4. The family savings of 20 years bought the family a small plot in Cambodia, but everything was lost in a single season's flooding. The disaster killed her mother as a result. After high school in Saigon, Ms. Duras left Indochina to study law in Paris. As a young woman, she worked as a secretary in France's Ministry of Colonies from 1935 to 1941, before becoming a writer. She wrote 34 novels from 1943 to 1993, and became an enduring part of Paris's intellectual elite. In addition to her writing, she also directed about 16 films. For the film India Song (1975), she won France's Cinema Academy Grand Prix. She claimed to have rescued French president François Mitterand during World War II, when he was a resistance fighter and remained a friend and unconditional campaigner. Her most noted novel is "L'Amant", the story of a girl, from a poor French family in Indochina, who becomes the mistress of a wealthy Indochinese notable's son.- Director
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Patrice Leconte was born on 12 November 1947 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for Ridicule (1996), La fille sur le pont (1999) and Man on the Train (2002).- Director
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Gaspar Noé is an Argentinian filmmaker and screenwriter who lives in France. He is the son of Luis Felipe Noé, an Argentinian artist. He directed I Stand Alone, Irréversible, Enter the Void, Love, Climax, Carne, Lux Æterna, Sodomites and Vortex. His films are known for having a sensory overload style, most notably in Enter the Void. He is married to Lucile Hadzihalilovic.- Director
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Director Max Ophüls was born Max Oppenheimer in Saarbrücken, Germany. He began his career as a stage actor and director in the golden twenties. He worked in cities such as Stuttgart, Dortmund, Wuppertal, Vienna, Frankfurt, Breslau and Berlin. In 1929 his son Marcel Ophüls was born in Frankfurt, Germany. He had begun to work under his pseudonym Max Ophüls by that time. In the early 1930s Ophüls discovered the movie world and began to work as an assistant director for Anatole Litvak. He directed his first movies (Dann schon lieber Lebertran (1931), Die verliebte Firma (1932)) in that time too. Around 1933 he emigrated to France and also worked in the Netherlands and Italy for a period of eight years. In 1941 he emigrated again, this time to the USA where he worked for a period of 10 years before he went back to France in 1950. Beginning in 1954 he also worked in Germany again, mainly for German radio in Baden-Baden. Max Ophüls died in March 1957 in Hamburg, Germany and is buried on the famous cemetery Père-Lachaise in Paris, France.- Director
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The work of Marcel Camus is characterized by a lyricism which, although central to his fine films of the 1950s and 60s - Fugitive in Saigon (1957), Black Orpheus (1959) and Love in the Night (1968) - later deteriorated into superficial sentimentality. Camus was a professor of painting and sculpture before breaking into film as an assistant to Alexandre Astruc, Georges Rouquier and Jacques Becker, among others. During this period he made his first film, a short documentary called Renaissance Du Havre (1950). Like many French filmmakers whose first chance to direct a feature came in the postwar era, Camus chose to deal explicitly with the issue of personal sacrifice in the context of war. But unlike most of his colleagues who quite naturally dealt with WWII, Camus took as his subject the war in Indochina. Based on a novel by Jean Hougron, Fugitive in Saigon depicts a village caught between two fronts. Its only possibility of survival involves the destruction of a dam on which it depends. Camus then embarked on three films in collaboration with scenarist Jacques Viot. The first, Black Orpheus, brought him international acclaim. Winner of the 1959 grand prize at Cannes and an Academy Award as best foreign language film, this exotic modern adaptation of the Greek legend portrays its Orpheus (Breno Mello) as a streetcar conductor who meets his Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) and lives out his legendary destiny during the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. The next two Camus-Viot collaborations, Os Bandeirantes (1960) and L'oiseau de paradis (1962), were generally well received, but neither lived up to the expectations created by Black Orpheus. Love in the Night (1968), an affecting portrait of nocturnal Paris, proved successful, but Un été sauvage (1970) was generally recognized as an inauthentic and superficial evocation of young people on vacation in Saint-Tropez. Camus then returned to the subject of war, this time with a gentle comedy about a Normandy restaurant owner who becomes a hero of the Resistance in spite of himself. Le mur de l'Atlantique (1970) offered a rich role for comic actor Bourvil, but was essentially a routine commercial product. This unfortunate trend continued with Bahia (1976), and some unexceptional work for French TV.- Writer
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Revered by such legendary fellow directors as Ingmar Bergman and Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier is one of the most legendary figures in the history of French cinema. He is perhaps the most neglected of the "Big Five" of classic French cinema (the other four being Jean Renoir, Rene Clair, Jacques Feyder, and Marcel Carne), partly due to the uneven quality of his work. But despite his misfires, the cream of his oeuvre is simply stellar and deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as filmdom's most breathtaking masterpieces. Initially working as a stage actor, Duvivier began his movie career in 1918 as an assistant to such seminal French helmsmen as Louis Feuillade and Marcel L'Herbier. A year later, he directed his first film, "Haceldama ou le prix du sang" (1919), which was not successful and evinced nothing of the lyricism and beauty that would define the director's later work. He continued directing, however, eventually earning a job with Film D'Art, a production company founded by producers Marcel Vandal and Charles Delac. It was here, at Film D'Art, that Duvivier was to really find his way at an artist. In the 1930s, Duvivier's talents came into full bloom, beginning with "David Golder" in 1930. Duvivier's subsequent efforts in this decade, aided by the advent of sound in motion pictures, would establish Duvivier as one of the leading forces in world cinema. It was also in the 1930s that Duvivier began working with Jean Gabin, an actor who would appear in many of Duvivier's most career-defining films, most notably "Pepe le Moko" (1937). "Pepe" was the cracklingly entertaining story of a sly gangster and master thief (Gabin) who lives in the casbah section of Algiers. A prince of the underworld, Pepe's criminal mastery is shaken when his arch nemesis Inspector Slimane, exploits a young Parisian beauty as a ploy to capture this most elusive the casbah's crooks. The latter film made Jean Gabin an international star and also attained enough popularity and critical acclaim to earn Duvivier an invitation from MGM to direct a biopic of great director Johann Strauss, entitled "The Great Waltz" (1938). Duvivier found Hollywood agreeable and would later return there during WWII. His wartime output was of varied quality, one of the most meritorious being "Tales of Manhattan" (1942). Duvivier returned to France after the war, where he found his reputation and standing to be badly damaged by his absence during the war years. He continued to work in France for the remainder of his life, however, eventually regaining success with such films as the Fernandel vehicle "Le Petit monde de Don camilo" (1951) which as awarded a prize at the Venice Film Festival. Duvivier had just completed production on his final project, "Diaboliquement vôtre" (1967), when he was killed in an auto accident at the age of 71. Though his life and career ended with this tragic accident, his legacy lives on through his films and in the minds and hearts of many.- Director
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Georges Franju is a figure of immense importance in the history of French cinema, not primarily for his films (exceptional though many of these are) but for being the co-founder, with Henri Langlois, of the Cinematheque Française in 1937--France's most famous and important film archive.
He worked primarily as a film archivist until 1949, when he made his solo directorial debut with the shocking yet lyrical slaughterhouse documentary Blood of the Beasts (1949). More documentary shorts followed before his feature debut, Head Against the Wall (1959) in 1958, which established his uniquely poetic and visually striking style (his films were generally characterized by unforgettable images that owed a great deal to early cinema in general and German Expressionism in particular). His reputation was strengthened with the bizarre plastic surgery horror film Eyes Without a Face (1960); Judex (1963), a tribute to French film serial pioneer Louis Feuillade in 1963; and the Jean Cocteau adaptation Thomas the Impostor (1965), though in the last 15 years of his life he was sadly neglected.- Writer
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Born in Brest, France, in 1922, Alain Robbe-Grillet initially studied mathematics and biology. He graduated from the Paris-based Institut National Agronomique (National Institute of Agronomy) in 1945 and embarked on a career of scientific research in the tropics and in France. Then at age 30 he decided to change the direction of his career and concentrate on the thorny problem of literature. His novels were at first panned by the fashionable critics of the time, but he succeeded in winning (along with such now famous friends as Samuel Beckett, Nathalie Sarraute, Claude Simon and Marguerite Duras) worldwide recognition and wide readership for the last literary movement in France known as "Le Nouveau Roman". or "New Novel". His books have been translated in some 30 languages and include "Le Voyeur: (1955), "La jalousie" (1965), "La maison de rendez-vous" (1965), "Project pour une révolution à New York e Djinn" (1981), "Le miroir qui revient" (1985) and "Les Derniers jours de Corinth" (1994). At 40 he emabarked on a parallel career as screenwriter and film director, venturing once again into unorthodox narrative structures. With Alain Resnais he won the "Golden Lion" in Venice in 1961 for Last Year at Marienbad (1961) ("Last Year at Marienbad") and won the Louis Delluc Prize two years later for L'Immortelle (1963), the first film which he wrote and directed himself. This was followed by Trans-Europ-Express (1966), The Man Who Lies (1968) ("The Man who Lies"), Eden and After (1970) ("Eden and Afterwards"), Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974) ("The Slow Slidings of Pleasure"), Playing with Fire (1975) ("Playing with Fire"), )La belle captive (1983)_ ("The Beautiful Captive") and Un bruit qui rend fou (1995) ("The Blue Villa"). He lives in seclusion in the countryside in Normandy, where he tends to his collection of cacti. He continues to travel the world, and to teach modern literature and film to graduate students in several American universities.- Writer
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Marcel Pagnol was born on 28 February 1895 in Aubagne, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was a writer and producer, known for The Well-Digger's Daughter (1940), Jean de Florette (1986) and Le schpountz (1938). He was married to Jacqueline Pagnol and Simone Collin. He died on 18 April 1974 in Paris, France.- Director
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Leos Carax made several short films and also wrote film criticism, then at the age of 24 years made a very strong first feature Boy Meets Girl (1984). The film played at the 1984 Cannes film festival and was a critical triumph. It paved the way for Carax's second feature Bad Blood (1986) (Bad Blood). That film was a giant step forward in the same direction that he was going in with his first film. Both films were visually stunning and focused on young love and also alienation. With his reputation and talent at its peak, he set out to make what seemed it seemed like would be another triumph. The Lovers on the Bridge (1991) (The Lovers on the Bridge) was the result of three long years of very difficult production; Carax spent a fortune building some of the sets and filming some mind-blowing sequences. Unfortunately, neither critics nor audiences favored what was a truly grand vision of the themes he dealt with in his first two films. Carax went into an a 8 year long exile, but finally returned with Pola X (1999). It was a departure from his other films and another critical flop.- Writer
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Jean-Paul Rappeneau was born on 8 April 1932 in Auxerre, Yonne, France. He is a writer and director, known for Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), A Matter of Resistance (1966) and Bon Voyage (2003).- Director
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Pioneering animator Emile Cohl was born Emile Eugène Jean Louis Courtet in Paris, France, in 1857. He began his career as a caricaturist, cartoonist and writer in his 20s, and in 1908 he was hired by the Gaumont film company as a writer. He soon also became a director, turning out comedies and fantasies, but animated films--which were just starting to come into their own--fascinated him and he began experimenting with them. He worked with line drawings, silhouettes and puppets, and in 1908 he turned out A Fantasy (1908), generally considered to be the first fully animated film (it consisted of 700 drawings of a character he created, "Fantoche", each separately photographed). He made more than 250 animated films between 1908 and 1923 for a variety of studios, including Eclair and Pathe.
Unfortunately, Cohl was financially ruined by the Great Depression of the early 1930s, and he died in poverty in France in 1938 after having caught pneumonia.- Director
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Marc Allégret was born on 22 December 1900 in Basel, Switzerland. He was a director and writer, known for The Curtain Rises (1938), Avec André Gide (1951) and Julietta (1953). He was married to Nadine Vogel. He died on 3 November 1973 in Paris, France.- Actress
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Diane Kurys was born on 3 December 1948 in Lyon, Rhône, France. She is an actress and director, known for For a Woman (2013), Entre Nous (1983) and Peppermint Soda (1977).- Director
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Claude Autant-Lara was born on 5 August 1901 in Luzarches, Val-d'Oise, France. He was a director and writer, known for Devil in the Flesh (1947), The Crossing of Paris (1956) and The Red and the Black (1954). He was married to Ghislaine Autant-Lara. He died on 5 February 2000 in Antibes, Alpes-Maritimes, France.- Actress
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Coline Serreau was born on 29 October 1947 in Paris, France. She is an actress and writer, known for Three Men and a Cradle (1985), Why Not! (1977) and Chaos (2001). She was previously married to Benno Besson.- Writer
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André Téchiné was born on 13 March 1943 in Valence, Tarn-et-Garonne, France. He is a writer and director, known for Wild Reeds (1994), Rendez-vous (1985) and Being 17 (2016).- Writer
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Chris Marker was born on 29 July 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. He was a writer and director, known for 12 Monkeys (1995), Sans Soleil (1983) and Third Side of the Coin (1960). He died on 29 July 2012 in Paris, France.- Writer
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French actor, dramatist and director, Sacha Guitry was born in 1885 in Saint-Petersburg where his father, actor Lucien Guitry, was under contract with the city's French theater. Early on, Sacha knew he was going to be an artist. Therefore, his studies were mediocre.
His acting debuts were not too encouraging either. It is as playwright that Guitry obtained his first success in 1905 with two comedies, the one act play 'Le K.W.T.Z' and the full-length play 'Nono'. Guitry's career as dramatist was launched. In the following years, he became a particularly prolific and popular writer, mostly of spiritual, caustic comedies. In 1907, Guitry went back on stage to act in his own play 'Chez les Zoaques' and would perform in most of his subsequent plays.
In 1916, he directed his first film, 'Ceux de chez nous', a patriotic documentary illustrating the works of some French artists like Auguste Renoir or Auguste Rodin. In 1917, he wrote and played in the movie 'Un Roman d'amour et d'aventures' under the direction of René Hervil and Louis Mercanton, an experience that left him unsatisfied.
It is only in 1935 that he came back in the movie studio to direct and act in 'Pasteur', a biography of the famous scientific. The film, based on a play Guitry wrote in 1919, was a commercial failure, but during the shooting, Guitry fell in love with the process of filmmaking. From then on, he would continue to write and act in new stage plays, but making movie also became an important part of his life.
He followed 'Pasteur' with 'Bonne chance', a comedy written directly for the screen. In 1936 alone, Guitry released no less than four movies, including the film versions of two of his best known plays: 'Faisons un rêve' (written in 1916), and 'Mon Père avait raison' (written in 1919). He also directed 'Le Roman d'un tricheur', this time from a short story he published in 1934. Despite lukewarm reviews, the movie was well received by the public and was also successful in the USA. It is now considered his most innovative film.
In 1937, he wrote 'Les perles de la couronne', and co-directed it with Christian-Jacque. An ambitious and expensive historical fantasy featuring a prestigious casting, the film was both a critical and commercial success. Guitry continued in the same vein the following year with 'Remontons les Champs Élysées'. The Second World War didn't stop his activities. During the occupation, he notably directed and played in the historical film 'Le Destin fabuleux de Désiré Clary' (1942), the sentimental drama 'Donne-moi tes yeux' (1943) and the biography 'La Malibran' (1944).
It is well established that during that period, Guitry had occasional contacts with members of the occupying forces, though he worked only with French independents producers, didn't allowed his plays to be performed in Germany, and had some problems with the German censorship. But he also managed to maintain a lavish lifestyle that was in sharp contrast with the life of deprivation that was the fate of most of his contemporaries.
It is possibly for that reason that, in August 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Guitry was arrested at his home following an anonymous denunciation. He was set free after two months in jail but though no official accusations were laid against him, he was forbidden to appear on stage or on screen. Finally, in 1947, he was cleared of any wrong-doings and allowed to resume his work. But his reputation was tarnished and in the years to come, he would frequently face the hostility of a certain press.
For his come-back, Guitry wanted to make a movie about historical figure Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, but his screenplay was rejected by the authorities. So, Guitry adapted his scenario for the theatre and took the title role. Many commentators accused him to indulge in a self-justification attempt, but the play was a success and Guitry was finally able to turn it into the movie 'Le Diable boîteux' (1948).
Guitry continued to be as prolific, writing new plays, reviving old successes, penning screenplays, directing movies. But the cheerfulness of the pre-war works was replaced by a more acerbic humor like in the film 'La Poison' (1951), a movie that attracted mostly negative reviews when it came out but is today considered one of his best films.
There was a change of mood in 1953 with the release of 'Si Versailles m'était conté', another high budget historical fantasy that obtained a great success. At that time, Guitry's health was deteriorating, forcing him to give-up stage acting at the end of 1953. Despite his poor shape; Guitry, galvanized by the reception of 'Si Versailles m'était conté', wrote and directed two other historical dramas 'Napoléon' (1954) and 'Si Paris nous était conté' (1956). His general condition was so bad that, for that last film, he authorized the producer to use Henri-George Clouzot and Marcel Achard as back-ups, should he be in the impossibility to complete the film. Guitry finished his career with two comedies 'Assasins et voleurs' (1955), and 'Les Trois font la paire' (1957). He died during the summer of 1957.
Guitry's movies are only part of his legacy. He also left us above 100 plays, countless 'bons mots' and the memory of a flamboyant, often controversial personality. His films were often held in low esteem by the critics. Some of those movies were shot really fast (11 days for 'La Poison', 8 days for 'Faisons un rêve' and 'Mon Père avait raison'). Whether they are based on a play or not, dialogues are always paramount in his films, and when he adapted his plays, he never tried to hide their theatrical origin. Oddly enough, the films that were highly praised when they came out are not the ones best regarded today.- Director
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An educated man, Jean Grémillon (b.1898) should almost be mentioned in the same breath as the big five of the golden age of the French cinema (Carné, Renoir, Duvivier, Feyder and Clair). Some of his plans never came to anything: for instance, after World War 2, only three movies, which is too few for such a man.
The silent years: Grémillon's career began with documentary shorts... and ended the same way. His first effort (1923) dealt with Chartres town. Three years later came his first feature film "Maldone". One of his recurrent features is already here rebellion against the wealthy class. It's the story of a young heir who favors freedom over possessions. "Gardien De Phare" could be remade today (and its influence appears in some horror movies): Two lighthouse keepers (the father and the son) are to spend one entire month in the middle of the sea near the coasts of Brittany; flashbacks reveal us that the young man has been bitten by a rabid dog.
The period of transition: his first talkie "La Petite Lise" (1930) was a melodrama; the male character was probably inspired by Hugo's Jean Valjean. "Dainah La Métisse" was some kind of murder mystery: did she jump or was she pushed? But what's extraordinary is the obvious connection with Gremillon's later work "Pattes Blanches" (1947): the murder of the bad girl (Suzy Delair) by Maurice (Michel Bouquet) on the cliff, and the white bride veil. The director himself confessed he never liked its follow-up "Pour Un sou D' Amour", not exactly class struggle. Both his Spanish movies sank without a trace. "La Dolorosa" was a musical where they sing every ten minutes; his collaboration with Luis Buñuel seemed unworthy of both men's talent: "It is odd that Luis Buñuel singled out the uninspired but decidedly above-average melodrama" (Mario Gauci). "La Valse Royale" (1935), a French-(Hitlerian) Germany co-production did nothing to rectify Gremilllon's stature: "light-hearted gallantry" best described this old-fashioned, poorly written story with some hints at the French Revolution.
The golden years: From "Gueule d'Amour" (1937) onward, Grémillon would never produce anything mediocre. This 1937 work was the stuff Gabin's legend was made, his part of a legionnaire who experimented tragedy. "L'Etrange Monsieur Victor" gave Raimu the opportunity to play, masterfully, a part of a criminal. The making of "Remorques" began in 1939, but because of the occupation, was released in 1941: the banal plot mattered much less than the atmosphere; the star of the movie was the Ocean: you could hear, feel, or see it ceaselessly along the viewing. "Lumière D'Ete" (1942) pitted the men of leisure against the working class heroes. Although it was a Prévert/Laroche screenplay, the main influence here was Renoir's. All that concerned Paul Bernard's character and his fete in the castle strongly recalled "La Règle Du Jeu". Probably the center of gravity of the movie, this memorable sequence of the Farandole - while the tragedy was impending - would find an equivalent in Prévert/Carné's ending of "Les Enfants Du Paradis". Nowadays, it is generally considered Grémillon's apex. "Le Ciel est A Vous" (1943) was a beautiful movie dedicated to daring women who were feminists ahead of their time, the story of a woman who wanted to be an aviator. During the Occupation, the Petainist France set this movie up as an example of virtue and courage, against the dirty Clouzot's "le Corbeau". After the Liberation, both movies were attacked, the former for being too Petainist, the latter for showing the darkest side of the occupied country.
The post-war years: Grémillon's career was never the same, although the three movies he made were very interesting. Jean Anouilh, who wrote the screenplay, was to direct "Pattes Blanches", but he fell sick and had to give it up. He chose Jean Grémillon to do the job and he was right: it included moments of desperate lyricism. In "L'Etrange Madame X" (1951), Jean Grémillon and Albert Valentin did what they did best: setting a working class milieu against the bourgeois world. His final effort, "L'Amour D'Une Femme" was beautiful but extremely sad, even lugubrious. It featured two funerals and many depressing scenes; even the love scenes were sad. When Madame Leblanc, a schoolteacher about to retire, packs her stuff. When the doctor asked herself if her work was finally worthwhile, we think of the director who probably knew it was to be his final work. During his last years he had to be content with shorts, which, for a first-class director such as him, was certainly a shame, considering the great works he could still have made. He died at 61, prematurely.- Director
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Jean Rouch was born on 31 May 1917 in Paris, France. He was a director and cinematographer, known for Moi, un noir (1958), Madame L'Eau (1993) and Six in Paris (1965). He was married to Joselyne Lamothe. He died on 18 February 2004 in Birni N'Konni, Niger.- Producer
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Louis Lumière was a French engineer and industrialist who played a key role in the development of photography and cinema. His parents were Antoine Lumière, a photographer and painter, and Jeanne Joséphine Costille Lumière, who were married in 1861 and moved to Besançon, setting up a small photographic portrait studio. Here were born Auguste Lumière, Louis and their daughter Jeanne. They moved to Lyon in 1870, where their two other daughters were born: Mélina and Francine. Auguste and Louis both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. At age 17, Louis invented a new process for film development using a dry plate. This process was significantly successful for the family business, permitting the opening of a new factory with an eventual production of 15 million plates per year. In 1894, his father, Antoine Lumière, attended an exhibition of Edison's Kinetoscope in Paris. Upon his return to Lyon, he showed his sons a length of film he had received from one of Edison's concessionaires; he also told them they should try to develop a cheaper alternative to the peephole film-viewing device and its bulky camera counterpart, the Kinetograph. This inspired brothers Auguste and Louis to work on a way to project film onto a screen, where many people could view it at the same time. By early 1895 they invented a device which they called the Cinématographe, a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures, and patented it on 13 February 1895. Their screening of a single film, Leaving the Factory (1895), on 22 March 1895 for around 200 members of the Society for the Development of the National Industry in Paris was probably the first presentation of projected film. Their first commercial public screening at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris on 28 December 1895 for around 40 paying visitors and invited relations has traditionally been regarded as the birth of cinema. The cinematographe was an immediate hit, and its influence was colossal. Within just two years, the Lumière catalogue included well over a thousand films, all of them single-shot efforts running under a minute, and many photographed by cameramen sent to various exotic locations. The Lumière brothers saw film as a novelty and had withdrawn from the film business by 1905. The Lumière freres' cinematographer was not their only invention. Mainly Louis is also credited with the birth of color photograph, the Autochromes, using a single exposure trichromic basis (instead of a long three-step exposure): a glass plaque is varnished and embedded with potato starch tinted in the three basic colors (rouge-orange, green and violet-blue), vegetal coal dust to fill the interstices and a black-and-white photographic emulsion layer to capture light. They were the main and more successful procedure for obtaining color photographs from 1903 to 1935, when Kodachrome, then Agfacolor and other less fragile film based procedures took over. An Autochrome is positivated from the same plaque, so they are unique images with a soft toned palette. As the Institut Lumière describes them, they are a middle point between photography and painting (akin specially to pointillism technique), because of their pastel shades and easy but still static pose looks.- Director
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The daughter of a cavalry captain, she was raised by a grandmother in Paris, where she studied various forms of art with an emphasis on music and the opera. In 1905 she married engineer-novelist Marie-Louis Albert-Dulac and under his influence veered toward journalism. As one of the leading radical feminists of her day, she was editor of La Française, the organ of the French suffragette movement. She also doubled as theater and cinema critic of the publication and became increasingly enamored with film as an art form. In 1915 she formed, with her husband, a small production company, Delia Film, and began directing highly inventive, small-budget pictures. Chronologically, she was the second woman director in French films, after Alice Guy, a contemporary of Georges Méliès. With La fête espagnole (1920) and her masterpiece, _Souriante Madame Beudet, La (1922)_, Dulac emerged as a leading figure in the impressionist movement in French films. In the late 20s, she was an important part of the "second avant-garde" of the French cinema with the surrealistic _Coquille et le Clergyman, La (1927)_ and a number of other experimental films. In these as well as in her theoretical writing, her goal was "pure" cinema, free from any influence from literature, the stage, or even the other visual arts. She talked of "musically constructed" films, or "films made according to the rules of visual music." Dulac was also instrumental in the development of cinema clubs throughout France in the mid-20s. Sound put an end to her experimentations and her career as a director. From 1930 until her death she was in charge of newsreel production at Pathé, then at Gaumont.- Director
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Raymond Bernard was born on 10 October 1891 in Paris, France. He was a director and writer, known for Anne-Marie (1936), Adieu... Chérie (1946) and La maison vide (1921). He was married to Jeanne Salley. He died on 11 December 1977 in Paris, France.- Actor
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Xavier Beauvois was born on 20 March 1967 in Auchel, Pas-de-Calais, France. He is an actor and writer, known for Of Gods and Men (2010), North (1991) and Don't Forget You're Going to Die (1995).- Actor
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Gérard Oury was born on 29 April 1919 in Paris, France. He was an actor and writer, known for The Sucker (1965), The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (1973) and Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! (1966). He was married to Jacqueline Roman. He died on 19 July 2006 in Saint-Tropez, Var, France.- Director
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Philippe de Broca born in 1933 worked as an assistant for Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut ( "Les 400 coups" aka "The 400 blows" ). From 1960 to 2004 he directed over 30 full-length feature films, including the highly successful adventure movies such as "That Man from Rio" (L'Homme de Rio) in 1964 and "Le Magnifique" in 1973, romantic comedies as "Le Cavaleur" in 1979, epics as "Chouans" in 1988 and "On Guard" (Le Bossu) in 1999. His personal favorite film was "King of Hearts" ( Le Roi de Coeur) that he wrote, directed and produced.- Director
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Maurice Pialat was a French film director. Film critics have noted the naturalist style of his films, and their autobiographical elements.
Pialat obtained his first camera when only 16-years-old, but his early career involved creating documentary short films. His ambition was to become a painter and not a filmmaker. He made his feature film debut at the age of 43 with the drama film "Naked Childhood" (1968), concerning a child of the French foster care system who is moved through a series of foster families. The film also explored aspects of French working-class life in the 1960s, while being apolitical.
Pialat's second feature film was "We Won't Grow Old Together" (1972),concerning a loveless marriage. Lead actor Jean Yanne won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his role in the film. Pialat's third feature film was the "The Mouth Agape" (1974), depicting in realistic fashion a woman struggling with a terminal illness. The film also dealt with the escapades of the woman's husband and son in their attempts to find new sexual partners. The film was noted for its lack of sentimentality, and incorporated experiences that Pialat had from the death of his own mother.
Pialat's fourth feature film was the teen drama "Graduate First" (1978). It dealt with teenagers from working class families dealing with the end of their school lives, with their limited prospects of passing their final exams and gaining a Baccalauréat academic qualification, and with the ominous specter of high unemployment in northern France in their immediate future.
Pialat's fifth film was "Loulou" (1980), concerning the self-destructive affair between a married woman and a lower-class criminal (the eponymous Loulou) who has just been released from prison. The film dealt with the issues of pregnancy and abortion in a realistic manner. The film was nominated for the Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Pialat's sixth film was "To Our Loves" (1983), and concerned the sexuality of a 15-year-old girl. The film's protagonist Suzanne (played by Sandrine Bonnaire) becomes increasingly promiscuous, as sex is the only pleasure in her life. But at the same time struggles with an inability to feel genuine love for any of her sexual partners, struggles with growing feelings of boredom and frustration about other aspects of her life, and even struggles with suicidal thoughts. The film won the César Award for Best Film, while film critics noted that the film's message was that happiness was rare and sorrow last forever.
Pialat's seventh film was the crime drama "Police" (1985). It concerned a jaded police detective investigating a drug smuggling ring, while being romantically attracted to the girlfriend of a drug smuggler. The film's lead actor Gérard Depardieu won the Best Actor of the Venice Film Festival for this role.
Pialat's eighth film was the romantic drama "Under the Sun of Satan" (1986), an adaptation of the 1926 novel by Georges Bernanos (1888-1948). The film dealt with a Catholic priest who falls in love with a female murderer. The film won the Palme d'Or award at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, despite being seen as controversial due to its subject matter. It was the first time in 21 years that a French film won the Palme d'Or.
Pialat's ninth film was the biographical film "Van Gogh" (1991), concerning the last months in the life of painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and dealing with van Gogh's relationship with his few close associates. The film dealt primarily with van Gogh's "difficult personal relationships and declining mental state", and not with his paintings. Film critics commented that it successfully covered the artist's humanity, without being either melodramatic or sensationalist.
Pialat's tenth was "The Son Of..." (1995), concerning the family life of a 4-year-old boy. The titular boy's parents are divorced, and the boy is raised by a single father who has an unsteady love life. The film was poorly received compared to Pialat's previous works, and Pialat had plans to re-edit the film to achieve better results. Pialat's increasingly poor health aborted these plans, and Pialat retired from filmmaking in 1995, at the age of 70.
Pialat died in January, 2003, at the age of 77. His work is considered unique among the French directors, but he has had few imitators. Film critic Kent Jones has commented that Pialat always marched to the beat of a different drummer, and never cared whether anyone marched beside or behind him.- Director
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A prolific director--over 700 films, most of them short- or medium-length--Louis Feuillade began his career with Gaumont where, as well as directing his own features, he was appointed artistic director in charge of production in 1907. His work was largely comprised of film series; his first series, begun in 1910 and numbering 15 episodes, was 'Le Film Esthétique', a financially unsuccessful attempt at "high-brow" cinema. More popular was La vie telle qu'elle est (1911), which moved from the costume pageantry of his earlier work to a more realistic--if somewhat melodramatic--depiction of contemporary life. Feuillade also directed scores of short films featuring the characters Bébé and René Poyen. His most successful feature-length serials were Fantômas: In the Shadow of the Guillotine (1913), which chronicled the diabolical exploits of the "emperor of crime," and Les vampires (1915), which trailed a criminal gang led by Irma Vep (Musidora) and was noted for its imaginative use of locations and lyrical, almost surreal style.- Director
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Nicolas Philibert was born on 10 January 1951 in Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France. He is a director and writer, known for To Be and to Have (2002), La Maison de la radio (2013) and In the Land of the Deaf (1992).- Director
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Jean-Pierre Gorin was born on 17 April 1943 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for All's Well (1972), My Crasy Life (1992) and Spy Games (1999).- Writer
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Claude Sautet was born on 23 February 1924 in Montrouge, Seine [now Hauts-de-Seine], France. He was a writer and director, known for A Heart in Winter (1992), Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995) and The Things of Life (1970). He was married to Graziella Sautet. He died on 22 July 2000 in Paris, France.- Director
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Luc Moullet was born on 14 October 1937 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for La comédie du travail (1988), Les contrebandières (1968) and Le système Zsygmondy (2001).- Director
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Arnaud Desplechin was born on 31 October 1960 in Roubaix, Nord, France. He is a director and writer, known for Kings & Queen (2004), The Sentinel (1992) and La vie des morts (1991).- Writer
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- Editor
Philippe Garrel was born on 6 April 1948 in Paris, France. He is a writer and director, known for Regular Lovers (2005), I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar (1991) and Liberté, la nuit (1984).- Director
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- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Yves Allégret was born on 13 October 1905 in Asnières-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. He was a director and writer, known for The Proud and the Beautiful (1953), La meilleure part (1955) and Dédée d'Anvers (1948). He was married to Michèle Cordoue, Simone Signoret and Renée Naville. He died on 31 January 1987 in Jouars-Pontchartrain, Yvelines, France.- Director
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Born in Paris on July 13th 1923, Alexandre Astruc is the son of a couple of journalists. Very good at school, he attended a preparatory school for Polytechnique but finally became both a law and an arts graduate. First a literary critic, he soon specialized as a film critic and worked for various papers and magazines such as "Combat", "La Gazette du Cinéma", "L'Ecran français", "La Nef", "Ciné-Digest", "Les Cahiers du Cinéma". He was instrumental in the creation of the film club "Objectif 49" and of the "Festival du Film Maudit" in Biarritz (circa 1949/50). His first two works were sixteen millimeter films characteristic of the Saint Germain des Prés" era. In the fifties and early sixties he directed very personal, elegant, literary movies but found it harder and harder to find producers interested in his style. He turned to television and novel writing instead.- Director
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As an actor he became popular as Albert de Morcerf in a version of The Count of Monte Cristo (1954), fame and adulation followed with his Francois in Head Against the Wall (1959). As a director he became famous with anarcho-pictures, brilliant cynic comedies. His preferred actors in all decades were Michel Serrault and Jean Poiret - till the late 80s they were his leading stars. When Jeanne Moreau appeared in Le miraculé (1987), many other leading French screen-stars followed.- Editor
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Jean Eustache was born on 30 November 1938 in Pessac, Gironde, France. He was an editor and director, known for The Mother and the Whore (1973), My Little Loves (1974) and Les photos d'Alix (1982). He died on 3 November 1981 in Paris, France.- Director
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Marcel L'Herbier was born on 23 April 1888 in Paris, France. He was a director and writer, known for L'inhumaine (1924), Le bonheur (1934) and Sacrifice d'honneur (1935). He was married to Marcelle Pradot. He died on 26 November 1979 in Paris, France.- Producer
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Robert Guédiguian was born on 3 December 1953 in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He is a producer and writer, known for Marius and Jeannette (1997), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011) and La ville est tranquille (2000). He has been married to Ariane Ascaride since 1975.- Director
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Jacques Doillon was born on 15 March 1944 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for The Little Gangster (1990), Ponette (1996) and Young Werther (1993).- Writer
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Guy Debord was born on 28 December 1931 in Paris, France. He was a writer and director, known for In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978), Howlings in Favour of De Sade (1952) and Fuerza nueva: Canción para los obreros de Seat (2019). He was married to Alice Becker-Ho and Michele Bernstein. He died on 30 November 1994 in Bellevue-la-Montagne, Auvergne, France.- Actor
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Pierre Clémenti was born on 28 September 1942 in Paris, France. He was an actor and director, known for Belle de Jour (1967), The Leopard (1963) and À l'ombre de la canaille bleue (1986). He was married to Margareth Clémenti. He died on 27 December 1999 in Paris, France.- Writer
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Nelly Kaplan was born on 11 April 1931 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was a writer and director, known for Charles and Lucie (1979), Papa, the Lil' Boats (1971) and A Very Curious Girl (1969). She died on 12 November 2020 in Geneva, Canton de Genève, Switzerland.- Writer
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Eduardo de Gregorio was born on 12 September 1942 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a writer and director, known for Corps perdus (1989), Stolen Tangos (2001) and Surreal Estate (1976). He died on 13 October 2012 in Paris, France.- Director
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Jacques Doniol-Valcroze was a French critic, actor, and director. He was born March 15, 1920 in Paris, France. Doniol-Valcroze is known for having co-founded the film magazine "Cahiers du Cinéma" in 1951 along with partners André Bazin and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. The magazine was first edited by Doniol-Valcroze between 1951-1957. As a film critic, he was among the first to champion many now-legendary filmmakers, including Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, and Nicholas Ray. He played a central role as a critic in the French New Wave discussing the emergence of the new cinema as the co-founder of "Cahiers du Cinéma", and by hiring talented emerging critic/directors such as Truffaut, Godard and Rohmer to work for the magazine. His own works in this area include directing the film "L'Eau à la Bouche" and acting in a few New Wave films, including Chantal Akerman's cult feminist classic "Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles". He was friends with François Truffaut who shot his first short film "Une Visite" in his apartment. He also shot TV short documentaries on his friend Jean-Luc Godard, which highlighted Godard's views on cinema, including "Godard à propos de Brigitte Bardot". The Director's Fortnight was founded in 1968 during the strikes which closed down the Cannes Film Festival. The Fortnight was the idea of Jacques Doniol-Valcroze. The event was sponsored by his fledgling Société des Réalisateurs de Films (Film Directors Society) with the intention of opening the Cannes Festival up to lesser known filmmakers, without any bias against budgets or shooting formats. He died on October 6, 1989, age 69, in Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes, France.- Director
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Alain Tanner was born on 6 December 1929 in Geneva, Switzerland. He was a director and writer, known for Charles, Dead or Alive (1969), In the White City (1983) and Return from Africa (1973). He was married to Janine Giudici. He died on 11 September 2022 in Geneva, Canton de Genève, Switzerland.Swiss director