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  • BIRTH 11/11/1898
  • DEATH 15/03/1981
  • Country France
  • MOVIE 1
  • DIRECTOR 25
  • SCRIPT 21
  • PRODUCTION 10

René Clair

René Clair was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the UK and USA for more than a decade. Returning to France after World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie française in 1960. Clair's best known films include The Italian Straw Hat (1928), Under the Roofs of Paris (1930), Le Million (1931), À nous la liberté (1931), I Married a Witch (1942), and And Then There Were None (1945).

In 1924, while Clair was working on Ciné-sketch for the theatre with France Picabia, he first met a young actress, Bronja Perlmutter, who subsequently appeared in his film Le Voyage imaginaire (1926) premiered at the newly opened Studio des Ursulines. They married in 1926, and their son, Jean-François, was born in 1927.

René Clair died at home on 15 March 1981, and he was buried privately at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois.

Clair's reputation as a film-maker underwent a considerable reevaluation during the course of his own lifetime: in the 1930s he was widely seen as one of France's greatest directors, alongside Renoir and Carné, but thereafter his work's artifice and detachment from the realities of life fell increasingly from favour. The avant-gardism of his first films, and especially Entr'acte, had given him a temporary notoriety, and a grounding in surrealism continued to underlie much of his comedy work. It was however the imaginative manner in which he overcame his initial scepticism about the arrival of sound which established his originality, and his first four sound films brought him international fame.

Clair's years of working in the UK and USA made him still more widely known but did not show any marked development in his style or thematic concerns. It was in the post-war films that he made on his return to France that some critics have observed a new maturity and emotional depth, accompanied by a prevailing sense of melancholy but still framed by the elegance and wit that characterised his earlier work.

However, in the 1950s the critics who heralded the arrival of the French New Wave, especially those associated with Cahiers du Cinéma, found Clair's work old-fashioned and academic. The paradox of Clair's reputation has been further heightened by those commentators who have seen François Truffaut as the French cinema's true successor to Clair, notwithstanding the occasions of their mutual disdain.

René Clair

Movie

Les Trésors de Marcel Pagnol
Les Trésors de Marcel Pagnol
Self (archive footage)

Director (25)

Les Grandes Manœuvres
Les Grandes Manœuvres
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None
Tout l'or du monde
Tout l'or du monde
Sous les toits de Paris
Sous les toits de Paris
La Beauté du diable
La Beauté du diable
Un chapeau de paille d'Italie
Un chapeau de paille d'Italie
Porte des Lilas
Porte des Lilas
Entr'acte
Entr'acte
Quatorze Juillet
Quatorze Juillet
Le Voyage imaginaire
Le Voyage imaginaire
The Flame of New Orleans
The Flame of New Orleans
Le silence est d'or
Le silence est d'or
Le Dernier Milliardaire
Le Dernier Milliardaire
La Proie du vent
La Proie du vent
Les Quatre Vérités
Les Quatre Vérités
Les Fêtes galantes
Les Fêtes galantes
Les Belles de nuit
Les Belles de nuit
La Française et l'Amour
La Française et l'Amour
Paris qui dort
Paris qui dort
It Happened Tomorrow
It Happened Tomorrow
À nous la liberté
À nous la liberté
I Married a Witch
I Married a Witch
The Ghost Goes West
The Ghost Goes West
Le Million
Le Million
Forever and a Day
Forever and a Day

Script (21)

Les Grandes Manœuvres
Les Grandes Manœuvres
Porte des Lilas
Porte des Lilas
Sous les toits de Paris
Sous les toits de Paris
La Beauté du diable
La Beauté du diable
Un chapeau de paille d'Italie
Un chapeau de paille d'Italie
Tout l'or du monde
Tout l'or du monde
La Française et l'Amour
La Française et l'Amour
The Flame of New Orleans
The Flame of New Orleans
Le silence est d'or
Le silence est d'or
Le Dernier Milliardaire
Le Dernier Milliardaire
Prix de beauté
Prix de beauté
La Proie du vent
La Proie du vent
Les Quatre Vérités
Les Quatre Vérités
Quatorze Juillet
Quatorze Juillet
Les Fêtes galantes
Les Fêtes galantes
Paris qui dort
Paris qui dort
It Happened Tomorrow
It Happened Tomorrow
À nous la liberté
À nous la liberté
The Ghost Goes West
The Ghost Goes West
Le Million
Le Million
Le Voyage imaginaire
Le Voyage imaginaire

Production (10)

Les Grandes Manœuvres
Les Grandes Manœuvres
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None
Tout l'or du monde
Tout l'or du monde
Porte des Lilas
Porte des Lilas
Entr'acte
Entr'acte
I Married a Witch
I Married a Witch
Paris qui dort
Paris qui dort
Les Belles de nuit
Les Belles de nuit
Le silence est d'or
Le silence est d'or
The Flame of New Orleans
The Flame of New Orleans