Julien Duvivier

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Julien Duvivier
Duvivier in 1932
Born(1896-10-08)8 October 1896
Lille, France
Died29 October 1967(1967-10-29) (aged 71)
Paris, France
NationalityFrench
Occupations
  • Film director
  • screenwriter
Years active1919–1967

Julien Duvivier (French:

Marianne de ma jeunesse.[3][4][5][6]

Jean Renoir called him, a "great technician, [a] rigorist, a poet".[7]

Early years

It was as an actor, in 1916 at the

Carmelite saint Thérèse of Lisieux
.

The 1930s

In the 1930s Duvivier was part of the production company, 'Film d'Art', founded by Marcel Vandal and Charles Delac and he worked as part of a team. He stayed with them for nine years.

La belle équipe (also 1936), with Jean Gabin, Charles Vanel and Raymond Aimos. The film remains a significant example of his work. Five unemployed men hit the lottery jackpot and decide to buy a seaside café/dance hall together. The unexpected, however, keeps happening. Once jealousy over a woman, Gina, (Viviane Romance), gets mixed up with the venture, there is little left to save. The original ending of the film involving a killing, was judged too pessimistic, and another, happier ending, was filmed. It was the happier version that was released, though both versions still survive. L'Homme du jour  [fr] (1936), with Maurice Chevalier in the lead role is a minor work in the director's canon but Pépé le Moko and Un Carnet de Bal
(both 1937) are incontestable summits.

Pépé le Moko, which plunges into the midst of the gangster underworld and which had the

La Fin du jour, in which theatre actors in retirement struggle to see that their retirement home remains open. Michel Simon played an old ham actor, and Louis Jouvet, an old leading actor who still believes in his seductive powers. La Charrette fantôme  [fr] followed, a horror film adapted from a novel by Selma Lagerlöf. In 1940 Untel père et fils, a family history starring Raimu, Michèle Morgan, and Louis Jouvet
, was not able to be shown — because of the political situation — until the end of the war, at least in France. It is generally considered a minor work, and even a failure.

World War II, his American period

During World War II, Duvivier left to work in the United States. Before leaving the continent, he spent some days in Portugal. He stayed in Estoril, at the Hotel Palácio, between 2 July and 6 July 1940.[9] After arriving in the United States, he produced several movies. Lydia (1941); two anthology films, Tales of Manhattan (1942) with Charles Boyer and Rita Hayworth among leading actors, and Flesh and Fantasy (1943) with Edward G. Robinson, Charles Boyer and Barbara Stanwyck; The Impostor (1944), again with Jean Gabin; and Destiny (also 1944), a Reginald Le Borg directed film which was built around a cut thirty-minute sequence from Flesh and Fantasy (Duvivier was uncredited) .

After the war

Julien Duvivier, on the right, with Italian writer Giovannino Guareschi, 1952

On his return to France, Duvivier experienced some difficulties in resuming his career.

Panic (Panique) (1946), an exhaustive summary of the lowest of human instincts, was the most personal, darkest, and nihilistic of his works. It was a bitter failure with critics and the public. Duvivier continued, notwithstanding, to work in France until the end of his life, apart from a short period in Great Britain to shoot Anna Karenina (1948) and to Spain for Black Jack
(1950).

Le Petit monde de Don Camillo. It met with immediate popular success and he followed its success with The Return of Don Camillo
(1953). The series continued with other directors.

In

Deadlier Than the Male (1956), Jean Gabin plays a decent restaurateur in Les Halles who is swindled by a cynical young woman, Catherine, (Danièle Delorme). Duvivier co-wrote and directed two films in 1957: the drama Lovers of Paris (starring Gérard Philipe) and the comedy-thriller The Man in the Raincoat (starring Fernandel and Bernard Blier
).

Chair de poule (1963) has a resemblance to The Postman Always Rings Twice
and again features an unscrupulous woman.

During the fall of 1967, just as the production of

Diaboliquement vôtre reached completion, a film about a man made amnesiac following a car accident, Duvivier was in a traffic accident, triggering a heart attack which killed him.[10] He was 71; he left behind a filmography comprising nearly 70 films. He is buried in the cemetery of Rueil-Malmaison in the Hauts-de-Seine
.

Rue Julien Duvivier in the 3rd arrondissement of Lyon

Filmography

Main article: Julien Duvivier filmography

References

  1. ^ "Julien Duvivier : Biography". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2015-04-05.
  2. ^ "Julien Duvivier - biography and films". Filmsdefrance.com. 1967-10-30. Retrieved 2015-04-05.
  3. ^ "Julien Duvivier - Panique (1947)-Cinema of the World". Archived from the original on 2011-01-13. Retrieved 2011-01-09.
  4. ^ "Voici le temps des assassins (1956)". Arsenevich: Julien Duvivier. 2010-10-17. Archived from the original on 2011-01-08. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  5. ^ "La Bandera (1935) - Julien Duvivier - film review". Filmsdefrance.com. Retrieved 2015-04-05.
  6. ^ "Pépé le moko (1937) - The Criterion Collection". Criterion.com. Retrieved 2015-04-05.
  7. ^ "Julien Duvivier". Moma.org. Retrieved 2015-04-05.
  8. ^ "Julien Duvivier". Mubi.com. Retrieved 2015-04-05.
  9. ^ Exiles Memorial Center.
  10. ISBN 978-1-5261-0762-6
    .

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julien_Duvivier&oldid=1214914914"