Henri-Georges Clouzot

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Henri-Georges Clouzot (November 20, 1907 - January 12, 1977) was a French film director, screenwriter and producer.

Clouzot was born in Niort, Deux-Sèvres. After studying classics at university, he first attempted to make his living as a journalist. However, in the 1920s, he worked as supervisor for a film company in Berlin, where he was exposed to the groundbreaking camerawork of the German cinema of the time. On his return to France, he began to work 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 pure entertainment, in the hope of keeping 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.[citation needed] After the Libération in 1944, the film became the subject of controversy as to whether it was a subtle work of resistance or an act of collaboration; either way, the film defied Continental's remit for making films with limited intellectual content. Because of the scandal, Clouzot was temporarily suspended from his professional activities in 1945. When he returned to film directing, 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 motivated by a perfectionism that sometimes tyrannized his actors.[citation needed] He was a moralist with a pessimistic view of society, as is shown in later 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 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, Claude Chabrol adapted and filmed a screenplay, L'Enfer, of a movie that Clouzot had been unable to finish 30 years before.

[edit] Filmography (director)

[edit] External links


Henri-Georges Clouzot

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