Pierre Schoendoerffer - biography

Pierre Schoendoerffer, a highly respected film director and journalist, was born in 1928 in Chamalières, in the Puy-de-Dôme region of central France.  In adolescence, he became fascinated with the idea of a life at sea and, aged 19, he began an 18 month stint as a sailor on a Swedish coaster.  The prospect of making a name for himself as a filmmaker appealed to him and so in 1952 he joined the cinematographic service of the French army.  His first assignment was as a camera operator in the Indochina war.  It was whilst he was filming the horrors of this protracted conflict that he was taken prisoner by the Viet Minh and he spent the next four months in a prison camp at Dien Bien Phu.  After his release, he worked as a war correspondent in the region for Life magazine.

In 1958, Schoendoerffer met one of his personal heroes, the writer Joseph Kessel, and decided to adapt his novel La Passe du diable for the cinema.  After this promising debut, Schoendoerffer went on to make several fictional films and documentaries which reflected his personal interests, be it the atrocities of modern warfare, the stoicism of soldiers on active service, or the drama of a life at sea.  His two best-known films - La 317e Section (1965) and Le Crabe-Tambour (1977) - are adaptations of his own novels, both of which were major critical successes.   La 317e Section is one of the earliest and very few French films to present an authentic account of the Indochina war and was both critically well-received and a surprising box office hit.  Schoendoerffer’s subsequent documentary on the Vietnam War, La Section Anderson (1967) won him an Oscar.  Two other notable films are: L’Honneur d’un capitaine (1982), a sobering reflection on the injustices of the Algerian War, and Dien Bien Phu (1992), a powerful meditation on the human cost of war.

As well as making an impact as a filmmaker, Pierre Schoendoerffer also pursued an active and very successful career as a writer and journalist, his talents recognised throughout the world.  He had three children, one of whom, Frédéric Schoendoerffer, has also distinguished himself as a film director.  He was a founder member of the Césars ceremony, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, and served as a vice-president of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.  He died on 14th March 2012, aged 83, shortly after an operation at a hospital at Clamart, Paris.

© James Travers 2012

Pierre Schoendoerffer directed the following films:
La Passe du diable (1958)
Ramuntcho (1959)
Pêcheur d’Islande (1959)
La 317e section (1965)
Objectif: 500 millions (1966)
Le Crabe-Tambour (1977)
L’Honneur d’un capitaine (1982)
Diên Biên Phu (1992)
Là-haut, un roi au-dessus des nuages (2003)

Pierre Schoendoerffer contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
Pêcheur d’Islande (1959)
Ramuntcho (1959)
La 317e section (1965)
Objectif: 500 millions (1966)
Le Crabe-Tambour (1977)
L’Honneur d’un capitaine (1982)
Farewell to the King (1989)
Diên Biên Phu (1992)
Là-haut, un roi au-dessus des nuages (2003)