René Clair

René Clair

Directing 1898-11-11 Paris, France

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.

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1965 Writer
1963 Narrateur (voice)
1962 Director
1962 Writer
1961 Director
1961 Screenplay
1961 Producer
1960 Director
1960 Writer
1960 Dialogue
1957 Director
1957 Screenplay
1957 Dialogue
1957 Producer
1956 Self
1955 Director
1955 Writer
1955 Producer
1952 Director
1952 Scenario Writer
1952 Adaptation
1952 Producer
1952 Dialogue
1950 Screenplay
1950 Director
1947 Director
1947 Producer
1947 Writer
1945 Producer
1945 Director
1944 Screenplay
1944 Adaptation
1944 Director
1943 Director
1942 Director
1942 Producer
1942 Dialogue
1941 Writer
1941 Director
1941 Producer
1938 Director
1938 Writer
1937 Assistant Director
1935 Director
1935 Writer
1934 Director
1934 Writer
1933 Screenplay
1933 Director
1931 Director
1931 Story
1931 Writer
1931 Director
1931 Editor
1930 Director
1930 Writer
1930 Adaptation
1930 Writer
1928 Director
1928 Director
1928 Director
1928 Screenplay
1928 Screenplay
1928 Screenplay
1927 Director
1927 Writer
1926 Director
1926 Writer
1925 Director
1925 Writer
1925 Writer
1925 Director
1925 Editor
1925 Editor
1925 Producer
1924 Director
1924 Adaptation
1924 Producer
1924 Assistant Director
1921