René Clair

René Clair (11 November 1898 – 15 March 1981) born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.

Biography

He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist under the pseudonym René Desprès. He also made his debut as an actor and became the assistant of Jacques de Baroncelli and Henri Diamant-Berger.

In 1924, he produced his first films, Entr'acte and Paris qui dort, which were followed by a quick succession of notable films. During World War II, he went to Hollywood and was stripped of his French citizenship by the Vichy government.

He was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Cambridge and received the Grand Prix du Cinéma Français in 1953. In 1960, he was elected to the Académie Française. He came to personify French film, and the prize for film awarded by the Académie Française bears his name.

Clair started making films before the advent of sound, and therefore had very conflicting views of its uses; he was forced to use sound in his films for financial success. However, in lieu of creating films from theater plays like other French directors, Clair used sound to take the audience out of the narrative and into a different reality.

One of his notable films, À Nous la Liberté led to a controversy involving Modern Times .

Filmography

Feature films

Short films

• Entr'acte (1924)
• Paris qui dort (1924)
  • Paris Asleep
  • The Crazy Ray
• La Tour (1928) Documentary
• Forever and a Day (1943) (segment "1897")
• La Française et l'amour (1960) (segment "Mariage, Le")
  • Love and the Frenchwoman
• Les Quatre vérités (1962) (segment "Les deux pigeons")
  • Three Fables of Love

Television

• Les Fables de La Fontaine (1964) (episodes "?")

Awards & Recognitions

• À nous la liberté (1931)
  • Venice Film Festival Audience Referendum Winner - Most Amusing Film
• The Ghost Goes West (1935)
  • Venice Film Festival Official Selection
• Les Belles de nuit (1952)
  • Venice Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize Winner

See also

• Cinema pur

External links

• René Clair at the Internet Movie Database
• Bibliography of books and articles about Rene Clair via UC Berkeley Media Resources center

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