Movies - Henri-Georges Clouzot

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	Movies - Henri-Georges Clouzot

Henri-Georges Clouzot (November 20, 1904 - January 12, 1977) was a French film director, screenwriter and producer.

Life

Henri-Georges Clouzot was born in Niort, Deux-Sèvres. After classical studies, he first attempted to make his living as a journalist. In the 1920's, he worked as supervisor for a film company in Berlin, where he was exposed to the ground breaking camerawork to be found in German films at the time. On return to France, he started working on film scripts, and then made his directorial debut with L'assassin habite au 21 (1942) which starred Pierre Fresnay and Suzy Delair. The film was made for the Continental film company, which had been setup in the occupied part of France at the behest of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels intended the company to produce films of purely entertainment value, in the hope they would keep French cinemagoers content (Hollywood films were banned under the occupation).

Clouzot's next film for Continental, Le Corbeau (1943), also starred Pierre Fresnay alongside popular leading lady Ginette Leclerc. The movie is a noir thriller concerning a spate of poison pen letters in a small French town. Critics have seen this as a comment on life under the occupation, where denunciations were common. After the Libération in 1944, the film was the subject of strong controversy as to whether it was a subtle work of resistance or an act of collaboration. Regardless of the controversy, it is certainly a remarkable film which defied Continentals remit for making films with limited intellectual content. Because of the scandal, Clouzot was temporarily suspended from his professional activities in 1945. Returning to film direction, he won several awards at the festivals of Venice and Cannes with Quai des orfèvres (1947), Manon (1949), and Le Salaire de la Peur (1952), all of which were also very popular with audiences.

A moviemaker in a classical style, Clouzot was moved by a kind of perfectionism that sometimes tyrannized his actors. A moralist with a pessimistic view of society, he is also the director of other renowned films such as Les Diaboliques
(1954), a macabre thriller which presents an ambivalent and ambiguous pair of women, played by Simone Signoret and Véra Clouzot, who plot the murder of a sadistic headmaster (Paul Meurisse), the husband of one and the lover of the other; Le Mystère Picasso (1956), a great documentary on the method of the painter and the birth of few of his paintings ; and La Vérité (1960), a drama starring Brigitte Bardot.

Henri-Georges Clouzot died in Paris on January 12, 1977.

In 1994, with L'Enfer, Claude Chabrol adapted and filmed the screenplay of a movie that Clouzot had been unable to finish 30 years before.

Filmography (director)

La Prisonnière 1968
Grands chefs d'orchestre 1966
La Vérité 1960
Les Espions 1957
Le Mystère Picasso 1956
Les Diaboliques
(Diabolique) 1954
Le Salaire de la Peur (Wages of Fear) 1952
Retour à la vie 1949
Miquette et sa mère 1949
Manon 1948
Quai des orfèvres 1947
Le Corbeau 1943
L'assassin habite au 21 1942

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