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René Clair

 
Director: René Clair
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Actors
  • Born: Nov 11, 1898 in Paris, France
  • Died: Mar 15, 1981 in Neuilly, France
  • Occupation: Director, Writer, Actor
  • Active: '20s-'60s
  • Major Genres: Comedy, Fantasy
  • Career Highlights: À Nous la Liberté, Le Silence Est d'Or, Le million
  • First Major Screen Credit: Le Sens De La Mort (1921)

Biography

In 1920 René-Lucien Chomette began acting in films under the name René Clair. He performed in Louis Feuillade's 1921 serials L'Orpheline and Parisette, but in 1924 he began writing and directing his own films with the comic fantasy Paris Qui Dort (The Crazy Ray). Through the '20s Clair would make some of the most original and admired works of early French cinema, including the avant-garde short Entr'acte, the landmark early musicals Sous Les Toits De Paris and Le Million, and the classic satire A Nous La Liberté. Working in England and the United States during the 1930s and '40s, his films were dominated (sometimes overly so) by fantasy and whimsy, but he managed to inject some healthy venom into the Agatha Christie mystery And Then There Were None. He returned to Europe for his films of the 1950s and '60s, most notably La Beauté Du Diable (Beauty And The Devil) and Les Belles De Nuit (Beauties Of The Night). ~ All Movie Guide
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Wikipedia: René Clair
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René Clair
Born René-Lucien Chomette
11 November 1898(1898-11-11)
Paris, France
Died 15 March 1981 (aged 82)
Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France
Years active 1924 - 1965

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

Contents

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

Cultural offices
Preceded by
Fernand Gregh		 Académie Française
Seat 19
1960 - 1981		 Succeeded by
Pierre Moinot

See also

External links

v • d • e
René Clair
Feature films
Le Fantôme du Moulin-Rouge (1925) • Le Voyage imaginaire (1926) • La Proie du vent (1927) • Un chapeau de paille d'Italie (1928) • Les Deux timides (1928) • Sous les toits de Paris (1930) • Le Million (1931) • À nous la liberté (1931) • Quatorze Juillet (1932) • The Ghost Goes West (1935) • Break The News (1938) • The Flame of New Orleans (1941) • I Married a Witch (1942) • It Happened Tomorrow (1944) • And Then There Were None (1945) • Le Silence est d'or (1947) • La Beauté du diable (1950) • Les Belles de nuit (1952) • Les Grandes Manoeuvres (1955) • Porte des Lilas (1957) • Tout l'or du monde (1961) • Les Fêtes galantes (1965)
Short films
Entr'acte (1924) • Paris qui dort (1924, a/k/a The Crazy Ray) • La Tour (1928) • Forever and a Day (1943, segment "1897") • La Française et l'amour (1960, segment "Le Mariage") • Les Quatre vérités (1962, segment "Les Deux Pigeons")
Television
Les Fables de La Fontaine (1949, episode "?")
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Director. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "René Clair".  Read more

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