Marcel Carné - biography

Born in Paris in 1906, the son of a cabinet maker, Marcel Carné was to become one of the leading figures in French cinema in the 1930s and 1940s.  He began his career as a cameraman and film critic.  He worked with Jacques Feyder and, in 1929, made his first short film, Nogent, eldorado du dimanche.   Impressed by this film, René Clair engaged Carné to work as his assistant on Sous les Toits de Paris in 1930. 

In 1936 Carné directed his first full-length film, Jenny, in which he began his long and fruitful collaboration with the scriptwriter Jacques Prévert.  Over the following decade, the two men were responsible for some of the greatest films in French cinema history.  They developed a style known as poetic realism, a combination of lyrical idealism set in the context of a tragically oppressive environment, which fitted the mood of the time very well.  Their films included Le Quai des brumes and Les Enfants du paradis, in which starred some great actors, including Jean Gabin, Michèle Morgan and Arletty. 

After the war, Carné’s poetic realism became unfashionable and his association with Prévert ended in 1946 after the failure of Les Portes de la nuit and the cancellation of La Fleur de l’âge.  Carné continued making films, scoring a notable popular success with his 1958 film Les Tricheurs.  However, under the onslaught of negative criticism from the founders of the French New Wave, his filmmaking career soon fell into decline.  His final film, La Mouche, was begun in 1992, but never completed.

To find out more about Marcel Carné, visit:
http://www.marcel-carne.com/

“I also won one from the emperor of Japan, with a prize for the arts.  That’s important.”

“I don’t know what they’ll say when I die.  I don’t give a damn, but they’ll probably cry.”

“My father’s sister never married in order to raise me.”

“If you do two versions of a film, they should be identical.  With the same frames and settings.”

“When I last went to Italy, over two years ago, I had a lot more trouble understanding the language than I used to when I lived there for a year.  I used to speak very little but I could understand very well.”

“But I still always felt the absence of a mother.”

“It’s nice to know that people appreciate and respect you.”

“Well, I always run the risk of falling on my face, which has in fact happened.”

“For people to understand me when I travel, I speak with my hands.”

“A lot of people are upset that I’m not working.  They say it’s a disgrace.”

“I think you never forget your childhood, whether it was happy or unhappy.”

“I was very nervous at the beginning of Hotel du Nord.”

“The problem is that to be a producer, one must be a gambler, and the greatest French producers were gamblers.”

“Well, you know, I’m much older than I look.”

Marcel Carné directed the following films:
Nogent, Eldorado du dimanche (1929)
Jenny (1936)
Drôle de drame (1937)
Le Quai des brumes (1938)
Hôtel du Nord (1938)
Le Jour se lève (1939)
Les Visiteurs du soir (1942)
Les Enfants du paradis (1945)
Les Portes de la nuit (1946)
La Marie du port (1949)
Juliette ou La clef des songes (1950)
Thérèse Raquin (1953)
L’Air de Paris (1954)
Le Pays, d’où je viens (1956)
Les Tricheurs (1958)
Terrain vague (1960)
Du mouron pour les petits oiseaux (1962)
Trois chambres à Manhattan (1965)
Les Jeunes loups (1968)
Les Assassins de l’ordre (1971)
La Merveilleuse visite (1974)
La Bible (1977)

Marcel Carné contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
Nogent, Eldorado du dimanche (1929)
Le Quai des brumes (1938)
La Fleur de l’âge (1947)
La Marie du port (1949)
Juliette ou La clef des songes (1951)
Thérèse Raquin (1953)
L’Air de Paris (1954)
Le Pays, d’où je viens (1956)
Les Tricheurs (1958)
Terrain vague (1960)
Du mouron pour les petits oiseaux (1962)
Trois chambres à Manhattan (1965)
Les Jeunes loups (1968)
Les Assassins de l’ordre (1971)
La Merveilleuse visite (1974)
La Bible (1977)