René Clair
Born: November 11, 1898
Died: March 15, 1981
in Paris, France
Died: March 15, 1981
in 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.
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.
Movies for René Clair...
Title: René Clair, tout entre nous n'était qu'un jeu
Character: Lui-même
Released: February 9, 2021
Type: Movie
Title: Les Trésors de Marcel Pagnol
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: June 5, 2019
Type: Movie
The works of Marcel Pagnol are a veritable monument of French cultural heritage. Based on previously unseen archive material, film extracts, novels, plays, interviews and letters, the film pays tribute to the major author and popular filmmaker, who made his life a work and his work a life's project.
Title: Cinéastes de notre temps: Erich von Stroheim
Character: Self
Released: October 14, 2012
Type: Movie
Title: Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: September 24, 1978
Type: TV
Produced for television by Claude-Jean Philippe, the « Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma », recounts the history of French cinema from its birth to the beginning of the 1960s. With commentary read by Jean Rochefort.
Title: À la recherche de Jean Grémillon
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 1969
Type: Movie
Documentary about filmmaker Jean Grémillon.
Title: Civilisation: L'homme et les images
Released: January 1, 1967
Type: Movie
Collective contribution to a history of cinema, this issue of the “Civilisations” collection also takes part in the genesis of Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle and La Chinoise
Title: Laugh with Max Linder
Character: Narrateur (voice)
Released: November 22, 1963
Type: Movie
Pioneering comedy legend Max Linder wrote, produced, directed and starred in Seven Years Bad Luck. Hilarious misadventures begin when Max' butler, chasing a maid, breaks an expensive full-length mirror. The butler persuades the cook, who somewhat resembles Max, to stand behind the frame and be Max's reflection. This gag, developed by Max, has become a classic of film and even television borrowed by everyone from the Marx Brothers to Abbott and Costello to Red Skeleton.
Title: Parisette
Released: January 1, 1921
Type: Movie
This twelve-part melodrama details the intertwined fates of a Portuguese nobleman, a Carmelite nun, and a mysterious look-alike.
Title: Lily of Life
Released: January 1, 1920
Type: Movie
Loie Fuller, in her 1920 feature-length film Le Lys de la vie, […] explored the new technique for poetic ends, creating fleeting, dreamlike images that "freed" the medium from "illusionism" and imbued it with fantasy. A 17 minutes fragment is held at the Cinémathèque française.
Winnie the Pooh Collector & Pooh-fanatic Offering Donated Pooh Collections a Place In History
LET'S CONNECT:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MostPooh/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MostPooh
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mostpooh/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MostPooh5150
Email: poohfriends@MostPooh.com
Phone: 