Marcel Carné

Born Aug. 18, 1909, in Paris. French film director.

Carne has been working in motion pictures since 1928, beginning as an assistant director. He was also a journalist. In 1936 he made his first full-length film, the psychological drama Jenny. His next film was the grotesque satirical comedy The Strange Drama of Dr. Molyneux (1937), depicting the insecurity and instability of modern bourgeois life. He developed the same themes, but in their anxiety-laden and tragic aspects, in the films Port of Shadows (Quai de Brumes; 1938) and Daybreak {Le Jour Se Leve; 1939), which won Carné recognition as a master of poetic realism in the French cinema. The characteristic features of Carné’s artistic technique are a poetic mood (lyrical suburban landscapes), melancholic anxiety, and the theme of man’s fatal predestination to tragic loneliness in a hostile world. Les Visiteurs du Soir, a film made by Carné in 1942 based on a medieval legend, is an allegorical portrayal of the resistance to the violence of the fascist occupation forces. The film Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) draws on the tradition of French romantic art. The film is of a brilliantly spectacular nature and gives full play to the director’s fantasy.

The greatest French movie actors, including J. Gabin, Ar-letty, P. Brasseur, and J.-L. Barrault, have played in Carné’s films. His later films include Juliette, ou la Clef des Songes (1951), Thjrése Raquin (1953; based on a novel by E. Zola), VAir de Paris (1954), Les Tricheurs (1958), Three Weeks in Manhattan (1965), and Murderers in the Name of Order (1971).