René Clair

Regie, Produzent, Autor, Schnitt, Darsteller

11. November 1898 — 15. März 1981 (82 Jahre)
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.

Filme & Serien auf plex.tv

  • Das letzte Wochenende
    Das letzte Wochenende1945
  • Es lebe die Freiheit
    Es lebe die Freiheit1931
  • Was morgen geschah
    Was morgen geschah1944

Bekannt aus

  • Das letzte Wochenende
    Das letzte Wochenende1945
  • Meine Frau, die Hexe
    Meine Frau, die Hexe1942
  • Es lebe die Freiheit
    Es lebe die Freiheit1931
  • Zwischenspiel
    Zwischenspiel1924
  • Die Million
    Die Million1931
  • Was morgen geschah
    Was morgen geschah1944
  • Ein Gespenst geht nach Amerika
    Ein Gespenst geht nach Amerika1935
  • Unter den Dächern von Paris
    Unter den Dächern von Paris1930
  • Paris schläft
    Paris schläft1925
  • Der Pakt mit dem Teufel
    Der Pakt mit dem Teufel1950
  • Die Abenteuerin
    Die Abenteuerin1941
  • Die Schönen der Nacht
    Die Schönen der Nacht1952
  • Das große Manöver
    Das große Manöver1955
  • Der Florentiner Hut
    Der Florentiner Hut1928
  • Die Mausefalle
    Die Mausefalle1957
  • Feuer über England
    Feuer über England1937
  • Schweigen ist Gold
    Schweigen ist Gold1947
  • 14. Juli
    14. Juli1933
  • Alles Gold dieser Welt
    Alles Gold dieser Welt1961
  • The Imaginary Voyage
    The Imaginary Voyage1926

Filmografie