René Clair

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 Clairs 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 Cinésketch 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 JeanFrançois was born in 1927 René Clair died at home on 15 March 1981 and he was buried privately at SaintGermainlAuxerrois Clairs reputation as a filmmaker underwent a considerable reevaluation during the course of his own lifetime in the 1930s he was widely seen as one of Frances greatest directors alongside Renoir and Carné but thereafter his works artifice and detachment from the realities of life fell increasingly from favour The avantgardism of his first films and especially Entracte 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 Clairs 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 postwar 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 Clairs work oldfashioned and academic The paradox of Clairs reputation has been further heightened by those commentators who have seen François Truffaut as the French cinemas true successor to Clair notwithstanding the occasions of their mutual disdain