Henri-Georges Clouzot

Henri-Georges Clouzot (20 November 1907 – 12 January 1977) was a French film director, screenwriter and producer.

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.

Film historian and critic Claude Beylie reported this short was "surprisingly well made with expressive use of shadows and lighting contrasts that Clouzot would exploit on the full-length features he would make years later".

In 1934, Clouzot was fired from UFA Studios for his friendship with Jewish film producers such as Adolphe Osso and Pierre Lazareff.

In 1935, Clouzot was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent first to Haute-Savoie and then to Switzerland, where he was bedridden for nearly five years in all.

Clouzot's time in the sanatorium would be very influential on his career.

While bedridden, Clouzot read constantly and learned the mechanics of storytelling to help improve his scripts.

Clouzot also studied the fragile nature of the other people in the sanatorium.

Clouzot had little money during this period, and was provided with financial and moral support by his family and friends.

By the time Clouzot left the sanatorium and returned to Paris, World War II had broken out.

French cinema had changed because many of the producers he had known had fled France to escape Nazism.

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.

As a result of his association with Continental, he was barred by the French government from filmmaking until 1947.

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.

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.

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.

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.

His writing talents led him to theater and cinema as a playwright, lyricist and adaptor-screenwriter.

The quality of his work led producer Adolphe Osso to hire him and send him to Germany to work in Studio Babelsberg in Berlin, translating scripts for foreign-language films shot there.

Clouzot's later wife, Inès de Gonzalez, said in 2004 that La Terreur des Batignolles added nothing to Clouzot's reputation.

In Berlin, Clouzot saw several parades for Adolf Hitler and was shocked at how oblivious he felt France was to what was happening in Germany.