René Clair

Director, Productor, Escritor, Editor, Actor

11 de noviembre de 1898 — 15 de marzo de 1981 (82 años)
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.

Películas y series en Plex

  • Diez negritos
    Diez negritos1945
  • Viva la libertad
    Viva la libertad1931
  • Sucedió mañana
    Sucedió mañana1944

Conocido por

  • Diez negritos
    Diez negritos1945
  • Me casé con una bruja
    Me casé con una bruja1942
  • Viva la libertad
    Viva la libertad1931
  • Entreacto
    Entreacto1924
  • El millón
    El millón1931
  • Sucedió mañana
    Sucedió mañana1944
  • El fantasma va al oeste
    El fantasma va al oeste1935
  • Bajo los techos de París
    Bajo los techos de París1930
  • París que duerme
    París que duerme1925
  • La belleza del diablo
    La belleza del diablo1950
  • La llama de Nueva Orleans
    La llama de Nueva Orleans1941
  • Mujeres soñadas
    Mujeres soñadas1952
  • Las maniobras del amor
    Las maniobras del amor1955
  • Un sombrero de paja de Italia
    Un sombrero de paja de Italia1928
  • Puerta de las lilas
    Puerta de las lilas1957
  • Inglaterra en llamas
    Inglaterra en llamas1937
  • El silencio es oro
    El silencio es oro1947
  • Catorce de julio
    Catorce de julio1933
  • Todo el oro del mundo
    Todo el oro del mundo1961
  • The Imaginary Voyage
    The Imaginary Voyage1926

Filmography

2022
2022
2019
Les trésors de Marcel Pagnol · as Self (archive Footage)
1972
Midi Trente · as Self
1964
1956
Cinépanorama · as Self
1954
Camera Three · as Self
1952

1963
En compagnie de Max Linder · as Narrateur (voice)

1966
At the Theater Tonight · as French Adaptation
1952
Beauties of the Night · as Adaptation
1942
I Married a Witch · as Dialogue
1937
Fire Over England · as Assistant Director
1931
À Nous la Liberté · as StoryEn Plex
1931
A Severa · as Unconfirmed
1930
Beauty Prize · as Adaptation
1924
Entr'acte · as Adaptation