Jean Grémillon (French:[gʁemijɔ̃]; 3 October 1901 – 25 November 1959)[1] was a French film director.
Biography
After directing a number of documentaries during the 1920s, many now lost, Grémillon had his first substantial success with the dramatic feature Maldone in 1928. Over the next quarter-century, he directed twenty more feature films, of which he is best known for five made between 1937 and 1944: Gueule d'amour (1937), L'Étrange Monsieur Victor (1938), Remorques (1941), Lumière d'été (1943), and Le ciel est à vous (1944), all but the first starring
Madeleine Renaud.
Grémillon rejected what he referred to as "mechanical naturalism" in favor of "the discovery of that subtlety which the human eye does not perceive directly but which must be shown by establishing the harmonies, the unknown relations, between objects and beings; it is a vivifying, inexhaustible source of images that strike our imaginations and enchant our hearts."
^Note that, despite attempts at correction, the
IMDb entry on the director lists his date of birth erroneously as 4 March 1898. The correct date is given in his standard biography, by Geneviève Sellier, and confirmed by other leading sources including Katz's Film Encyclopedia and Wakeman's World Film Directors.
References
Print
Sellier, Geneviève (1989). Jean Grémillon: Le cinéma est à vous. Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck. (Correct date of birth: p. 13.)