Henri-Georges Clouzot (; 20 November 1907 – 12 January 1977) was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best remembered for his work in the thriller film genre, having directed The Wages of Fear (1953) and Les Diaboliques (1955), which are critically recognized as among the greatest films of the 1950s. He also directed documentary films, including The Mystery of Picasso (1956), which was declared a national treasure by the government of France.

Clouzot was an early fan of the cinema and, desiring a career as a writer, moved to Paris. He was later hired by producer Adolphe Osso to work in Berlin, writing French-language versions of German films. After being fired from UFA studio in Nazi Germany due to his friendship with Jewish producers, Clouzot returned to France, where he spent years bedridden after contracting tuberculosis. Upon recovering, he found work in Nazi-occupied France as a screenwriter for the German-owned company Continental Films. At Continental, Clouzot wrote and directed films that were very popular. His second film Le Corbeau drew controversy over its harsh look at provincial France, and he was fired from Continental before its release. As a result of his association with Continental, he was barred by the French government from filmmaking until 1947.

After the ban was lifted, Clouzot reestablished his reputation and popularity in France during the late 1940s with successful films including Quai des Orfèvres. After the release of his comedy film Miquette, Clouzot married Véra Gibson-Amado, who would star in his next three feature films. In the early and mid-1950s, Clouzot drew acclaim from international critics and audiences for The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques; both films would serve as source material for remakes decades later. After the release of La Vérité, his wife Véra died of a heart attack, and Clouzot's career suffered due to depression, illness and new critical views of films from the French New Wave.

Clouzot's career became less active in later years, limited to a few television documentaries and two feature films in the 1960s. He wrote several unused scripts in the 1970s and died in Paris in 1977.

Life and career

Early years

Henri-Georges Clouzot was born in Niort, Deux-Sèvres, to mother Suzanne Clouzot and father Georges Clouzout, a bookstore owner. He was the first of three children in a middle-class family. Clouzot showed talent by writing plays and playing piano recitals. His father's bookstore went bankrupt, and the family moved to Brest where Georges Clouzout became an auctioneer. In Brest, Henri-Georges Clouzot went to Naval School, but was unable to become a Naval Cadet due to his myopia. At the age of 18, Clouzot left for Paris to study political science. Whilst living in Paris, he became friends with several magazine editors.

Career

Screenwriting career (1931–1942)

Throughout the 1930s Clouzot worked by writing and translating scripts, dialogue and occasionally lyrics for over twenty films. While living in Germany, he saw the films of F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang and was deeply influenced by their expressionist style. Clouzot made his first short film, La Terreur des Batignolles, from a script by Jacques de Baroncelli. The film is a 15-minute comedy with three actors. French cinema had changed because many of the producers he had known had fled France to escape Nazism. In World War II, after France was invaded by Germany and subsequently during the German occupation, the German-operated film production company Continental Films was established in October 1940. Alfred Greven, the director of Continental, knew Clouzot from Berlin and offered him work to adapt stories of writer Stanislas-André Steeman. Clouzot began work on his second Steeman adaptation, which he would also direct, titled The Murderer Lives at Number 21. It starred Fresnay and Delair playing the same roles they had performed in Le Dernier de six. Released in 1942, the film was popular with audiences and critics. Grevin was against Clouzot making this film, stating that topic was "dangerous". Le Corbeau was released in 1943 and generated controversy from the right-wing Vichy regime, the left-wing Resistance press and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church considered the film "painful and hard, constantly morbid in its complexity". The Vichy press dubbed it the antithesis of the Révolution nationale and demanded it be banned due to its immoral values. The anti-Nazi resistance press considered it Nazi propaganda because of its negative portrayal of the French populace. Two days before the release of Le Corbeau, Continental films fired Clouzot. For Quai des Orfèvres, Clouzot asked the author Stanislas-André Steeman for a copy of his novel, Légitime défense, to adapt into a film. Clouzot started writing the script before the novel arrived for him to read. Quai des Orfèvres was released in 1947 and was the fourth most popular film in France, drawing 5.5 million spectators in that year. Le Retour de Jean was influenced by the short period when Clouzot lived in Germany in the early 1930s and stars Louis Jouvet as a survivor of a concentration camp who finds a wounded Nazi war criminal whom he interrogates and tortures.]]

Upon returning to France, he was offered a script written by Georges Arnaud, an expatriate living in South America who had written about his own experiences there. Clouzot found it easy to imagine the setting of the script and was very anxious to film Arnaud's story. He started writing the film, The Wages of Fear, with his brother, Jean Clouzot, who would collaborate with him on all his subsequent films under the name of Jérôme Geronimi. In order to gain as much independence as possible, Clouzot created his own production company called Véra Films, which he named after his wife. The Wages of Fear was the second most popular film in France in 1953 and was seen by nearly 7 million spectators. It won awards for Best Film and Best Actor (for Charles Vanel) at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1954, Les Diaboliques won the Louis Delluc Prize and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for best foreign film. In this early and mid-1950s period, with the films The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, Clouzot came to be fully embraced by international critics and audiences. Both films were screened and reviewed in America as well as in France, and were rated among the best thrillers of the decade. In 1984, the film was declared a national treasure by the government of France. Les Espions was not released in the United States and was a financial failure in France. Bardot plays Dominique Marceau, who is on trial for the murder of her former boyfriend Gilbert Tellier. As her trial progresses, the relationship between Dominique and Gilbert becomes more finely shaped. Bardot later described La Vérité as her favorite of all the films she worked on.

Later career and failing health (1960–1977)

thumbnail|right|Henri-Georges Clouzot's tomb at the [[Montmartre Cemetery.]]

Although Clouzot's reputation had grown internationally, he lost notability in French cinema due to rise of the French New Wave. The New Wave directors refused to take Clouzot's thriller films seriously, and expressed their displeasure publicly through articles and reviews in the film criticism publication, . Clouzot took their criticism to heart, saying in the magazine Lui that he didn't find his films Les Diaboliques and Miquette et Sa Mère important or interesting anymore. Lead actor Serge Reggiani fell ill one week after shooting began and had to be replaced. After production finished on the documentaries, Clouzot was able to finance his final picture. After finishing La Prisonnière, Clouzot's health grew worse. Clouzot had Delair star in two of his films, The Murderer Lives at Number 21 and Quai des Orfèvres. Delair eventually left Clouzot after working with him on Quai des Orfèvres. Véra Clouzot died of a heart attack shortly after the filming of La Vérité. Clouzot fell into a depression over her death. When basing screenplays on written work, Clouzot often changed the stories dramatically, using only key points of the original story. The author Stanislas-André Steeman, whom Clouzot worked with twice, said Clouzot would only "build something after having contemptuously demolished any resemblance to the original, purely for the ambition of effect". When writing for his own features, Clouzot created characters that were usually corrupt and spineless, with the capacity for both good and evil within them. Pierre Fresnay recalled that Clouzot "worked relentlessly, which made for a juicy spectacle...That's to say nothing for his taste of violence, which he never tried with me". Film historian Philipe Pilard wrote, "There is no doubt that if Clouzot had worked for Hollywood and applied the formulas of U.S. studios, today he would be lauded by the very critics who choose to ignore him". Clouzot respected Hitchcock's work, stating, "I admire him very much and am flattered when anyone compares a film of mine to his".

Several of Clouzot's films have been remade since their original releases. Director Otto Preminger adapted Le Corbeau into his 1951 film The 13th Letter. In 1977, the year of Clouzot's death, William Friedkin directed a remake of The Wages of Fear called Sorcerer. In 1996, an American remake of Les Diaboliques was released under the title Diabolique, starring Sharon Stone.

Filmography

  • L'assassin habite... au 21 (The Murderer Lives at Number 21, 1942)
  • Le corbeau (The Raven, 1943)
  • Quai des orfèvres (Goldsmiths' Quay, 1947)
  • Manon (1949)
  • Miquette et sa mère (Miquette, 1950)
  • Le salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear, 1953)
  • Les diaboliques (Diabolique, 1955)
  • Le mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso, 1956)
  • Les espions (The Spies, 1957)
  • La vérité (The Truth, 1960)
  • La prisonnière (Woman in Chains, 1968)

References

Notes

Bibliography

  • Bocque, José-Louis and Marc Godin. Henri-Georges Clouzot Cinéaste. La Sirène, 1993.
  • Chandler, Charlotte. It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock : A Personal Biography. Hal Leonard Corporation, 2006. .
  • Hayward, Susan. Les diaboliques. University of Illinois Press, 2005.
  • Lanzoni, Rémi Fournier. French Cinema: From its Beginnings to the Present. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004. .
  • Lloyd, Christopher. Henri-Georges Clouzot. Manchester University Press, 2007. .
  • Mayne, Judith. Le corbeau: French film guides series. I.B. Tauris, 2007. .
  • Singer, Barnett. Brigitte Bardot: A Biography. McFarland, 2006.