Françoise Rosay (19 April 1891 – 28 March 1974) was a French opera singer, diseuse,^[1] and actress who enjoyed a film career of over sixty years and who became a legendary figure in French cinema. She went on to appear in over 100 movies in her career.

Life and career[link]

Rosay was born Françoise Bandy de Nalèche in Paris, the illegitimate daughter of Marie-Thérèse Chauvin, an actress known as Sylviac. She originally planned to become an opera singer, and in 1917, won a prize at the Paris Conservatoire and made her debut at the Palais Garnier in the title role of Salammbô by Ernest Reyer. She also sang in Castor et Pollux by Rameau and Thaïs by Massenet.^[2]

Her first recorded film was Falstaff in 1911, and she began to work in Hollywood from 1929 onwards. In 1917, she married the director Jacques Feyder, with whom she remained until his death in 1948, having three sons. She appeared in several films under her husband's direction, including Le Grand Jeu (1933), Pension Mimosas (1934), La Kermesse héroïque (Carnival in Flanders) (1935) and Les Gens du voyage (1937). Rosay spent the duration of World War II in Switzerland, where she taught acting classes at the Conservatoire de Genève.^[2] She still appeared in films during this time, notably the British Halfway House (1944) as the refugee French wife of a British sea captain.

During her career, she appeared with all the great stars of French cinema, including Jean Gabin, Michèle Morgan, Raimu, Jeanne Moreau, Danielle Darrieux, Micheline Presle, Paul Meurisse, Gérard Philipe, Louis Jouvet, Michel Simon, Simone Signoret, Fernandel, Jean-Louis Barrault. In Hollywood, she co-starred with Charles Boyer, Maurice Chevalier and Buster Keaton and worked with directors such as William Dieterle (September Affair, 1949), Martin Ritt (The Sound and the Fury, 1958), Ronald Neame (The Seventh Sin, 1956) and Peter Glenville (Me and the Colonel, 1957) with Danny Kaye.^[2] In England she appeared in The Alien Corn, a segment of the W. Somerset Maugham anthology film Quartet. She played a famous piano virtuoso who gives would-be pianist Dirk Bogarde a compassionate but honest and devastating critical appraisal of his likelihood of becoming a great musician – which results in his suicide.

In 1950 she appeared on stage at London's Winter Garden Theatre, playing the title role in 'Madame Tic Tac' but it had only a short run.

It was not until 1938 that her natural father, Count François Louis Bandy de Nalèche acknowledged her as his daughter.^[2]

Her final appearance on film was in the Maximilian Schell-directed Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winner for Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film of 1974, Der Fußgänger (English title: The Pedestrian).

She died in Montgeron, Île-de-France, near Paris.^[2] Her grave is located in Sorel-Moussel, Île-de-France,^[3] where she is buried with her husband, movie director Jacques Feyder.^[4]

Partial filmography[link]

• Les Vampires (1915)
• Crainquebille (1922)
• Le Grand Jeu (1934)
• Pension Mimosas (1935)
• La Kermesse héroïque (English release title: Carnival in Flanders) (1935)
• Drôle de drame ou L'étrange aventure de Docteur Molyneux (English release title: Bizarre, Bizarre) (1937)
• Les Gens du voyage (1938)
• The Halfway House (1944)
• Macadam (English release title: Back Streets of Paris) (1946)
• Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948)
• Quartet (1948)
• September Affair (1950)
• Maria Chapdelaine (English release title: The Naked Heart) (1950)
• The 13th Letter (1951)
• Wanda la peccatrice (1952)
• Le Banquet des fraudeurs (English release title: The Smugglers' Banquet) (1952)
• Les Sept péchés capitaux (English release title: The Seven Deadly Sins) (1952)
• La Reine Margot (1954)
• Ragazze d'oggi (English release title: Girls of Today) (1955)
• Me and the Colonel (1958)
• The Sound and the Fury (1959)
• The Full Treatment (1960)
• La Métamorphose des cloportes (1965)
• Trois milliards sans ascenseur (1972)
• Der Fußgänger (English release title: The Pedestrian) (1973)

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Feyder, Jacques; Françoise Rosay (1944). Le Cinéma, notre métier. Genève: Skira. 
• Rosay, Françoise (1974). La Traversée d'une vie. Paris: Robert Laffont. 
• Olivier Barrot; Raymond Chirat (1986). Inoubliables!: Visages du cinéma français, 1930–1950. Paris: Calmann-Lévy. ISBN 2-7021-1409-1. 

External links[link]

• Françoise Rosay at the Internet Movie Database
• Françoise Rosay at AllRovi
• Françoise Rosay at Yahoo! Movies
• Françoise Rosay at Find A Grave
• Françoise Rosay at Cinémathèque française (French)
• Fan Site

Claude Autant-Lara (5 August 1901, Luzarches, Val-d’Oise – 5 February 2000, Antibes, Alpes-Maritimes), was a French film director and later Member of the European Parliament (MEP).

Biography[link]

Autant-Lara was educated in France and at London's Mill Hill School during his mother's exile as a pacifist. Early in his career, he worked as an art director and costume designer, his best known work in this vein was possibly for Nana (1926), a silent film directed by Jean Renoir. Autant-Lara also acted in the film.

As a director, he frequently created provocative movies, saying "if a film does not have venom, it is worthless". In the 1960s, he turned his back on the New Wave movement, and from then on he had no popular successes.

On 18 June 1989, he came to public notice again, controversially, when he was elected to the European Parliament as a member of the National Front and the oldest member of the assembly. In his maiden speech, in July, he caused a scandal by expressing his "concerns about the American cultural threat", provoking a walkout by the majority of the deputies.

In an interview granted to the monthly magazine Globe in September 1989, he engaged in what Minister of Justice Pierre Arpaillange referred to as "racial insults, racial slandering and incitements to racial hatred". He also described Nazi gas chambers as a "string of lies". The resulting scandal led to his resignation as European deputy. Moreover, the members of the Academy of the Fine Arts, of which he was a vice-president for life, voted to prohibit him from taking his seat thenceforth.

His memoir, The Rage in the Heart, appeared in 1984.

Filmography (director)[link]

• 1920 : L'Homme du large (actor, set design, assistant director)
• 1928 : Pour construire un feu (in early Henri Chretien widescreen process)
• 1931 : Buster se marie (French adaptation of Buster Keaton film Parlor, Bedroom and Bath, co-directed with Edward Brophy)
• 1933 : Ciboulette
• 1937 : L'Affaire du courrier de Lyon (co-directed with Maurice Lehmann)
• 1939 : Fric-Frac
• 1942 : Le Mariage de chiffon
• 1942 : Lettres d'amour
• 1943 : Douce
• 1946 : Sylvie et le fantôme
• 1947 : Le Diable au corps
• 1949 : Occupe-toi d'Amélie
• 1951 : L'Auberge rouge [also screenwriter]
• 1952 : The Seven Deadly Sins [also screenwriter]
• 1953 : Le Blé en herbe
• 1953 : Le Bon Dieu sans confession [also screenwriter]
• 1954 : Le Rouge et le noir
• 1955 : Marguerite de la nuit
• 1956 : La Traversée de Paris
• 1958 : Le Joueur
• 1959 : En cas de malheur
• 1959 : La Jument verte
• 1960 : Tu ne tueras point
• 1961 : Le Comte de Monte-Cristo
• 1961 : Vive Henri IV... vive l'amour! ... aka Long Live Henry IV... Long Live Love (USA: literal English title)
• 1963 : Le Meurtrier
• 1964 : Le Magot de Josefa
• 1965 : Le Journal d'une femme en blanc
• 1967 : Le Plus vieux métier du monde
• 1967 : Le Franciscain de Bourges
• 1969 : Les Patates
• 1977 : Gloria

In 1973 he adapted Stendhal's Lucien Leuwen for television.

In addition, he was director of at least five other films produced between 1923 and 1936.

References[link]

This article is based on the equivalent French-language Wikipedia article (retrieved November 30, 2005).

External links[link]

• Claude Autant-Lara at the Internet Movie Database

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)

Théâtre de l'Athénée Louis-Jouvet, Paris, named for Jouvet

Louis Jouvet (24 December 1887 - 16 August 1951) was a renowned French actor, director, and theatre director.

Life[link]

Overcoming speech impediments and sometimes paralyzing stage fright as a young man, Jouvet's first important association was with Jacques Copeau's Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, beginning in 1913. Copeau's training included a varied and demanding schedule, regular exercise for agility and stamina, and pressing his cast and crew to invent theatrical effects in a bare-bones space. It was there Jouvet developed his considerable stagecraft skills, particularly makeup and lighting (he developed a kind of accent light named the jouvet). These years included a successful tour to the United States.

While influential, Copeau's theater was never lucrative. Jouvet left in October 1922 for the Comédie des Champs-Élysées (the small stage of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées). In December 1923 he staged his single most successful production, the satire Dr. Knock, written by Jules Romains. Jouvet's meticulous characterization of the manipulative crank doctor was informed by his own experience in pharmacy school. It became his signature and his standby; "Jouvet was to produce it almost every year until the end of his life".^[1]

Jouvet began an ongoing close collaboration with playwright Jean Giraudoux in 1928, with a radical streamlining of Giraudoux's 1922 Siegfried et le Limousin for the stage. Their work together included the first staging of The Madwoman of Chaillot in 1945, at the Théâtre de l'Athénée, where Jouvet served as director from 1934 through his death in 1951.

Jouvet starred in some 34 films, including two records of Dr. Knock, once in 1933 and again in 1951. He was professor at the French National Academy of Dramatic Arts. He had a heart attack while at his beloved Théâtre de l'Athénée and died in his dressing room on Thursday, August 16, 1951.^[2] Louis Jouvet is buried in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. The Athénée theatre now bears his name.

He was the uncle of Anglo-French actor Peter Wyngarde.

Theatre[link]

• 1931: original production of Judith, written by Jean Giraudoux, at the Théâtre Pigalle
• 1935: original production of The Trojan War Will Not Take Place, written by Jean Giraudoux, starring Jouvet as Homer, also starring Madeleine Ozeray, at the Athénée in Paris
• 1947: directed the première of Jean Genet's The Maids at the Athénée in Paris on 17 April.
• 1951: directed the première of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Devil and the Good Lord at the Théâtre-Antoine in Paris on 7 June.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Louis Jouvet at the Internet Movie Database
• Louis Jouvet at the Internet Broadway Database
• Louis Jouvet at Find a Grave
• full text of English-language Jouvet biography online
• youtube clip of Jouvet as Dr. Knock

This article or section reads like an editorial or opinion piece and may require cleanup. Please improve this article by rewriting this article or section in an encyclopedic style to make it neutral in tone. Please see WP:No original research and WP:NOTOPINION for further details. (March 2011)

Michel Simon (9 April 1895, Geneva, Switzerland – 30 May 1975, Bry-sur-Marne, France), was a Swiss actor. He appeared in the notable films La Chienne (1931), Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), L'Atalante (1934), Port of Shadows (1938) and The Train (1964). The actor François Simon is his son.

Early years[link]

Simon used to say about himself that he was born in 1895 and, "as misfortune never comes singly, cinema was born the same year".

Son of a Protestant sausage maker, Simon soon left his family and town to go to Paris, where he first lived at the Hotel Renaissance, Saint-Martin Street, then in Montmartre. He worked many different jobs to survive, such as giving boxing lessons or peddling smuggled lighters. He devoured every book he could find, with special preference for Georges Courteline's writings.

His artistic beginnings in 1912 were modest: magician, clown and acrobat stooge in a dancers' show called "Ribert's and Simon's", in the Montreuil-sous-Bois Casino.

Conscripted into the Swiss Army in 1914, he was often insubordinate, spending a lot of time in the stockade. He also contracted tuberculosis.

In 1915, while on leave, he saw Georges Pitoëff's early work in the French language, at the Theatre de la Comédie of Geneva, acting in Hedda Gabler.

He then decided to become an actor too, but had to wait until 1920 before making his first brief appearance on stage, with Pitoëff's company, speaking three lines for the registrar role in the Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. He also worked at this time as the company's photographer. He was spotted for the first time in a supporting role in George Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion. In 1922, his company moved to Paris at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées.

He quit the following year to become a light comedy actor in plays by Tristan Bernard, Marcel Achard and Yves Mirande. Marcel Achard presented him to Charles Dullin, in whose company he acted in Je ne vous aime pas with Valentine Tessier.

Later years[link]

Louis Jouvet, who had meanwhile replaced Pitoëff, hired him at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées. Simon then gave a brilliant performance in Jean de la Lune, a play by Marcel Achard. His inimitable talent transformed his Cloclo supporting role to the big attraction of the play.

His theatrical career then blossomed with a large repertoire: Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw, Pirandello, Oscar Wilde, Bourdet, Henri Bernstein, but it was film that made him most popular. His first film appearance was Feu Mathias Pascal, adapted from Pirandello and directed by Marcel L'Herbier. Very soon after, he appeared in La vocation d'André Carel, directed by Jean Choux. The film used small-scale production methods, just as the Nouvelle Vague would do starting in 1958.

In silent movies, he brought his amazing appearance and his unusual face - a talent with an exceptional mobility, but truly without mannerism. He easily played with his body using an unlimited virtuosity, especially his ugliness, evolving from smartness to sympathy, goodness to naivety, ludicrousness to frightening, stupidity to comical, mischievousness to cruelty.

His film career was really boosted with the advent of talking pictures. People remarked that his elocution and voice tone were as original as his appearance and play. He then revealed his unclassifiable talent: action comedy, drama, tragedy, light comedy.

He appeared in 55 plays from 1920 to 1965, and 101 from 1965 to 1975.

He appeared in Dreyer's 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc. He acted in films for Jean Renoir (La Chienne, Boudu Saved From Drowning), Jean Vigo (L'Atalante) and Marcel Carné (Port of the Shadows, Bizarre, Bizarre).

In the 1950s, he reined in his activities following an accident involving a makeup dye that left part of his face and body paralysed.

In 1967, he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival for his role in Le vieil homme et l'enfant (The Two of Us).^[1]

He died at 80 years of age from a pulmonary embolism and is buried in the Grand-Lancy Cemetery of Geneva, next to his parents, as per his testamentary wishes.

The eccentric[link]

In the 1920s/1930s, Simon enjoyed associating with the Parisian lower classes.

Simon would say that he preferred "living with animals than humans". He lived for a long time in a kind of bohemian house in Noisy-le-Grand, near Paris. The house was surrounded by rank weeds, and filled with amazing bric-a-brac, including his large collection of erotica, including photographs and films. This collection was dispersed after his death.

Select filmography[link]

• 1925 Feu Mathias Pascal by Marcel L'Herbier ... Pomino
• 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc by Carl Theodor Dreyer
• 1931 On purge bébé by Jean Renoir
• 1931 La Chienne by Jean Renoir ... Maurice Legrand
• 1932 Boudu Saved from Drowning by Jean Renoir ... Priape Boudu
• 1933 High and Low by G. W. Pabst
• 1934 L'Atalante by Jean Vigo ... Old Jules
• 1934 Le Bonheur by Marcel L'Herbier ... Noël Malpiaz
• 1937 Bizarre, Bizarre by Marcel Carné ... Irwin Molyneux
• 1938 Boys' School by Christian-Jaque ... Lemel, the drawing teacher
• 1939 Port of Shadows by Marcel Carné ... Zabel
• 1939 Le Dernier tournant
• 1939 Fric-Frac by Claude Autant-Lara & Maurice Lehmann ... Jo
• 1940 Les Musiciens du ciel
• 1940 La Comédie du bonheur by Marcel L'Herbier ... M. Jourdain
• 1941 The Story of Tosca by Carl Koch ... Scarpia
• 1946 Panic by Julien Duvivier ... Monsieur Hire
• 1947 Les Amants du pont Saint-Jean
• 1949 Fabiola
• 1950 La Beauté du diable by René Clair ... Mephistopheles/Old Professor Henri Faust
• 1951 Poison by Sacha Guitry ... Paul-Louis Victor Braconnier
• 1952 Monsieur Taxi
• 1953 La Vie d'un honnête homme (1953)
• 1953 L'Étrange Désir de monsieur Bard (1954)
• 1955 The Impossible Mr. Pipelet by André Hunebelle ... Maurice Martin
• 1959 Die Nackte und der Satan by Victor Trivas ... Professor Abel
• 1960 Pete the Tender by François Villiers ... Pierrot
• 1960 Candide ou l'optimisme au XXe siècle
• 1962 Le Diable et les Dix Commandements by Julien Duvivier
• 1964 The Train by John Frankenheimer ...Papa Boule
• 1967 The Two of Us by Claude Berri ... Pepe
• 1971 Blanche by Walerian Borowczyk
• 1972 The Most Wonderful Evening of My Life by Ettore Scola ... Attorney Zorn
• 1975 The Red Ibis by Jean-Pierre Mocky ... Zizi with Michel Serrault and Michel Galabru

References[link]

External links[link]

• Michel Simon at the Internet Movie Database
• Michel Simon at AllRovi
• Michel Simon at Hollywood.com
• Michel Simon at Find A Grave
• Michel Simon at Films de France
• Geneva tourism website about his life

Marcel Carné (August 18, 1906^[1] – October 31, 1996) was a French film director. He is best known for the films Port of Shadows (1938), Le Jour Se Lève (1939) and Children of Paradise (1945), the latter of which is often cited as one of the greatest films of all time.

Biography[link]

Born in Paris, France, the son of a cabinet maker whose wife died when their son was five,^[2] Carné began his career as a film critic, becoming editor of the weekly publication, Hebdo-Films,^[3] and working for Cinémagazine and Cinémonde between 1929 and 1933.^[4] In the same period he worked in silent film as a camera assistant with director Jacques Feyder. By age 25, Carné had already directed his first short film, Nogent, Eldorado du dimanche (1929). He assisted Feyder (and René Clair) on several films through to La kermesse héroïque (1935).

Feyder accepted an invitation to work in England for Alexander Korda, for whom he made Knight Without Armour (1937), but made it possible for Carné to take over his project, Jenny (1936), as its director.^[4] The film marked the beginning of a successful collaboration with surrealist poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert. This collaborative relationship lasted for more than a dozen years, during which Carné and Prévert created their best remembered films. Together, they were involved in the poetic realism film movement of fatalistic tragedies.

Under the German occupation of France during World War II, Carné worked in the Vichy zone where he subverted the regime's attempts to control art; several of his team were Jewish, including Joseph Kosma and set designer Alexandre Trauner. Under difficult conditions they made Carné's most highly regarded film Les Enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise, 1945) released after the Liberation of France. In the late 1990s, the film was voted "Best French Film of the Century" in a poll of 600 French critics and professionals. Post war, he and Prévert followed this triumph with what at the time was the most expensive production ever undertaken in the history of French film. But the result, titled Les Portes de la nuit, was panned by the critics and a box office failure and was their last completed film.

By the 1950s, Carné's reputation was in eclipse. The critics of Cahiers du cinéma , who became the film makers of the New Wave, dismissed him and placed his film's merits solely with Prévert.^[5] Other than his 1958 hit Les Tricheurs, Carné's postwar films met with only uneven success and many were greeted by an almost unrelenting negative criticism from the press and within members of the film industry. In 1958, Carné was the Head of the Jury at the 6th Berlin International Film Festival.^[6] Carné made his last film in 1976.

Carné was gay and made little secret about it. Several of his later films contain references to male homosexuality or bisexuality. His one-time partner was Roland Lesaffre who appeared in many of his films.

In 1989 a book was published by Edward Baron Turk as part of the Harvard Film Studies that told his story under the title Child of Paradise: Marcel Carné and the Golden Age of French Cinema.

Marcel Carné died in 1996 in Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine, and was buried in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in Montmartre.

Partial filmography as director[link]

• Jenny (1936)
• Drôle de drame (1936)
• Le Quai des brumes (1938)
• Hôtel du Nord (1938)
• Le Jour se lève (1939)
• Les Visiteurs du soir (1942)
• Les Enfants du paradis (1945)
• Les Portes de la nuit (1946)
• La Marie du port (1949)
• Juliette ou La clef des songes (1951)
• Thérèse Raquin (1953)
• L'Air de Paris (1954)
• Les Tricheurs (1958)
• Terrain vague (1960)
• Trois chambres à Manhattan (1965)
• Les Jeunes loups (1968)
• Les Assassins de l'ordre (1971)
• La Merveilleuse visite (1973)
• La Bible (1976)

References[link]

External links[link]

• They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?
• Marcel Carné at the Internet Movie Database
• Marcel Carne a tribute website
• Marcel Carne Bibliography (via UC Berkeley

v t e Cinema of France Actors Directors Cinematographers Editors Films A-Z Producers Score composers Screenwriters Film festivals Films by year: 1892–1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012