Claude Berri (; 1 July 1934 – 12 January 2009) was a French film director, producer, screenwriter, distributor and actor.
Berri was a leading figure of the French film industry both a director and as a producer. Following a short film that won an Academy Award, Berri achieved success with his first feature film, The Two of Us (1967). He then had a varied career, producing and distributing both mainstream and avant-garde films. During the 1970s, Berri's films as a director were mostly comedies but he later found increased success with several high-profile literary adaptations. In 1986, his two-part film Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring won public and critical acclaim, becoming his best-known work. He next directed Uranus (1990) and most notably Germinal (1993). In 1997, he directed the historical biopic Lucie Aubrac.
Directors whose films were produced by Berri include Bertrand Blier, Edouard Molinaro, Francis Veber, Roman Polanski, Jacques Demy, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Jean Yanne, Claude Sautet, Costa Gavras, Miloš Forman, Philippe de Broca, Claude Zidi, Patrice Chéreau, Alain Chabat, Abdellatif Kechiche, Yvan Attal, Didier Bourdon, Bernard Campan, Christian Vincent and Dany Boon.
Early life
Born Claude Beri Langmann in Paris, Berri was the son of Jewish immigrant parents. His mother, Beila (née Bercu), was from Romania, and his father, Hirsch Langmann, was a furrier from Poland. In 1943, during the Nazi occupation of France, Berri's parents entrusted him for his safety to a family in the countryside. He spent the rest of the occupation being fostered by "an antisemitic couple" who were unaware that he was Jewish. His sister, screenwriter and editor Arlette Langmann, was born after the war.
Career
Berri's original vocation was to be an actor. He began a career in the early 1950s but struggled to find roles, which prompted him to turn to directing and eventually producing. In 1965, he gained notice for The Chicken, which won the Award for best short film at the 38th Academy Awards.
In 1967, Berri directed The Two of Us (Le Vieil homme et l'enfant), a partially autobiographical film that told the story of a Jewish child, entrusted during World War II to a benevolent and antisemitic old farmer who remains unaware that the boy he is caring for is a Jew. The film was a great success in France and abroad. Berri also adapted the story into a novel, released the same year as the film.
During the years that followed, Berri became active as a producer and film distributor while continuing to direct his own films. Also in 1967, with his associate (later brother-in-law) Jean-Pierre Rassam, Berri bought the international distribution rights for Miloš Forman's The Firemen's Ball which was a great success and was nominated to the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Berri's company, Renn Productions, which he had founded to produce The Two of Us, gradually became a major player in the French film industry. He also produced films starring Pierre Richard, then France's new comedy star, directed by Richard himself or by Zidi. While enjoying box-office success as a producer or co-producer of comedies, Berri was also involved in producing more challenging avant-garde films, such as Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore (1973) or Jacques Rivette's Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974). In 1979, he produced Roman Polanski's Tess (1979), which won the César Award for Best Film in 1980 and was nominated in 1981 to the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Throughout his directing and producing career, Berri appeared occasionally as an actor, in his own films or in those of other directors. He played starring roles in five of his films, Mazel Tov ou le Mariage (1968), Le Cinéma de papa (1971), Sex Shop (1972), Le Mâle du siècle (1975) and La Débandade (1999). Most of his other appearances were supporting parts or cameos, one notable exception being a starring role in Serge Gainsbourg's Stan the Flasher (1989). Berri later said that he had become less interested in directing comedies following the illness of his first wife, as his personal life was no longer a source of inspiration and amusement. So Long, Stooge was a box-office hit and received twelve nominations at the César Awards, with Coluche winning the César Award for Best Actor.
Berri next directed and produced a series of successful adaptations of French classic novels. In 1986, he made the two-part film that constitutes his best-known work, Jean de Florette and its sequel, Manon of the Spring (Manon des Sources), based on Marcel Pagnol's two-volume novel. Both films, who were at the time the French film industry's most expensive project ever, were huge international hits.
In 1990, Berri directed Uranus, based on Marcel Aymé's novel. The film, a dark satire of postwar France, was entered into the 41st Berlin International Film Festival. In 1993, he made Germinal, based on Émile Zola's classic novel. Like his 1986 Jean de Florette/Manon des sources project, Berri's Germinal was at the time the highest budget in the history of French cinema.
In 1997, Berri's film Lucie Aubrac, based on the eponymous resistance heroin's memoir, was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.
In 2003, he was elected as president of the Cinémathèque française where he obtained enough state subsidies to cover the costs of its resurgence at its new site in the rue de Bercy.
Berri's box-office successes as a producer include Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Bear (1988) and The Lover (1992) and Patrice Chéreau's La Reine Margot (1994). He also produced the first two live-action films of the Asterix franchise, Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar (1999) and Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002), the latter of which became one of the most commercially successful French films ever. Berri had been initially reluctant to work on a comic book adaptation until his son Thomas Langmann convinced him to produce the Asterix films.
In 2004, the big-budget action comedy San-Antonio was a box-office disaster, severely impacting Berri's production company. Berri had to rely on a €2 million loan from his partner Nathalie Rheims to keep his business afloat. The next year, Berri sold his remaining shares in Renn Productions to Pathé, shortly after initiating two major film projects, Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain (2007) and Dany Boon's Welcome to the Sticks (2008). Anne-Marie, who suffered from bipolar disorder, committed suicide in 1997 by jumping from a balcony.
Already suffering from depression and affected by the death of his first wife, Berri was further impacted when his eldest son also committed suicide in 2002. Julien Rassam had been physically disabled since an accident two years earlier. Berri's film L'Un reste, l'autre part (2005) was inspired by this family tragedy. one week info filming the comedy Trésor.
After Berri's death, a collection of nine works by Robert Ryman, Ad Reinhardt, Giorgio Morandi, Richard Serra and Lucio Fontana was promised to the Centre Pompidou in Paris in lieu of tax. But Berri's heirs ultimately sold them to Qatar, through French art dealer Philippe Ségalot, for about €50 million.
Following Berri's death, a legal dispute over his succession broke out between Thomas Langmann, his half-brother Darius, the latter's mother Sylvie Gautrelet, and Nathalie Rheims. Thomas accused Darius, Gautrelet and Rheims of misappropriating his father's assets, notably by stealing valuable works of art from his extensive collection.