Key Genres:
Comedy, Fantasy, Drama, Romance, Romantic Drama
Key
Collaborators: Paul
Ollivier (Leading Character Player), Albert Prejean (Leading Player), Raymond Cordy
(Leading Player), Lazare Meerson (Production Designer), Frank Clifford
(Producer), Georges Perinal (Cinematographer),
Renee Le Henaff (Editor), Louisette Hautecour (Editor), Georges Van Parys (Composer),
Leon Barsacq (Production Designer)
Recommended:
À nous la liberté (1931), I Married a Witch (1942), And Then There Were None
(1945)
Worth a Look: Entr'acte (1924), Paris qui dort (1924), The
Phantom of the Moulin Rouge (1925), The Italian Straw Hat (1927),
Quatorze Juillet (1932), Man About Town (1947), The Grand Maneuver
(1955), Gates of Paris (1957)
1,000
Greatest Films: Paris qui dort (1924), The
Italian Straw Hat (1927), Under the Roofs of Paris (1930),
Le Million
(1931), À nous la liberté (1931)
"Clair
now looks something less than the major director he was known as
in 1935. His work since that first venturing outside France has
seldom lacked amusement or a sense of fantasy, but it does seem
lightweight. Even his finest films - those made in the first
experiment of sound - are rather precious and too vaguely
opposed to "progress" when set beside L'Âge d'or,
L'Atalante, Boudu, or Toni. Clair's world is
brilliantly conceived and wrought, but it remains
self-contained." -
David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)
"Although Clair
made several English-language and Hollywood films, his American
period is generally blamed for his decline. The trouble with
Clair's American career is that he was typed for fantasy and
other fluff, and could never escape his niche...À Nous la
Liberté, Le Million, Sous les Toits de Paris,
The Italian Straw Hat retain a certain classic value, but
Clair, once too good to be called even the French
Lubitsch, now seems more like
the French Mamoulian." - Andrew
Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)
"Although
briefly associated with the French avant-garde (his second film,
Entr'acte, remains a masterpiece of pure cinema), from
the very start he considered film as a medium of entertainment.
He developed into one of the most original stylists in world
cinema, a complete filmmaker who always wrote or collaborated on
the films he directed and constantly explored the possibilities
of visual form, movement and sound." - (The
MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994)
Last
updated:
11/01/2008 01:31 AM.
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