René Clair Trailers
René Clair, tout entre nous n'était qu'un jeu TrailerLes Trésors de Marcel Pagnol TrailerCinéastes de notre temps : Erich von Stroheim Trailer
René Clair was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the UK and USA for more than a decade. Returning to France after World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie française in 1960. Clair's best known films include The Italian Straw Hat (1928), Under the Roofs of Paris (1930), Le Million (1931), À nous la liberté (1931), I Married a Witch (1942), and And Then There Were None (1945).
In 1924, while Clair was working on Ciné-sketch for the theatre with France Picabia, he first met a young actress, Bronja Perlmutter, who subsequently appeared in his film Le Voyage imaginaire (1926) premiered at the newly opened Studio des Ursulines. They married in 1926, and their son, Jean-François, was born in 1927.
René Clair died at home on 15 March 1981, and he was buried privately at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois.
Clair's reputation as a film-maker underwent a considerable reevaluation during the course of his own lifetime: in the 1930s he was widely seen as one of France's greatest directors, alongside Renoir and Carné, but thereafter his work's artifice and detachment from the realities of life fell increasingly from favour. The avant-gardism of his first films, and especially Entr'acte, had given him a temporary notoriety, and a grounding in surrealism continued to underlie much of his comedy work. It was however the imaginative manner in which he overcame his initial scepticism about the arrival of sound which established his originality, and his first four sound films brought him international fame.
Clair's years of working in the UK and USA made him still more widely known but did not show any marked development in his style or thematic concerns. It was in the post-war films that he made on his return to France that some critics have observed a new maturity and emotional depth, accompanied by a prevailing sense of melancholy but still framed by the elegance and wit that characterised his earlier work.
However, in the 1950s the critics who heralded the arrival of the French New Wave, especially those associated with Cahiers du Cinéma, found Clair's work old-fashioned and academic. The paradox of Clair's reputation has been further heightened by those commentators who have seen François Truffaut as the French cinema's true successor to Clair, notwithstanding the occasions of their mutual disdain.
Most Popular René Clair Trailers
Total trailers found: 42
22 November 1963
Pioneering comedy legend Max Linder wrote, produced, directed and starred in Seven Years Bad Luck. Hilarious misadventures begin when Max' butler, chasing a maid, breaks an expensive full-length mirror.
13 January 1933
A light, comedy romance about a cab driver named Jean and a flower girl named Anna that takes place in Paris during the Bastille day celebration of July 14th.
04 February 1931
Debt-ridden painter Michel is overcome with joy at discovering that he has just won 1 million florins in the Dutch lottery, but almost immediately, he discovers that his softhearted girlfriend, Béatrice, has given away his jacket containing the winning ticket to an elderly petty thief.
05 June 2019
The works of Marcel Pagnol are a veritable monument of French cultural heritage. Based on previously unseen archive material, film extracts, novels, plays, interviews and letters, the film pays tribute to the major author and popular filmmaker, who made his life a work and his work a life's project.
02 January 1938
Two small-time song-and-dance men come up with what they believe is a surefire publicity stunt, guaranteed to keep their names in the public eye--one of them will "disappear" in what looks like a murder, and the other will be convicted of the crime.
01 January 1969
Documentary about filmmaker Jean Grémillon.
27 September 1957
Juju, a drunken oaf who feels the need of being important to someone---anyone---and his friend The Artist are forced at gunpoint to house a fugitive, Pierre Barbier, in Juju's broken-down home.
21 January 1943
In World War II, American Gates Trimble Pomfret is in London during the Blitz to sell the ancestral family house.
30 October 1942
A 17th-century witch returns to wreak havoc in the life of a descendant of the Puritan witch hunter who burned her, but runs afoul of her father when she discovers that her mischief might have found her true love.
31 October 1945
Ten strangers are summoned to a remote island and while they are waiting for the mysterious host to appear, a recording levels serious accusations at each of the guests.
05 March 1937
The film is a historical drama set during the reign of Elizabeth I (Flora Robson), focusing on the English defeat of the Spanish Armada, whence the title.
26 October 1955
Armand, a boastful womaniser, makes a bet that he can seduce any girl he wants. He soon crosses paths with a beautiful Parisian divorcee, who is nothing like anyone he has ever met before.
01 January 1921
This twelve-part melodrama details the intertwined fates of a Portuguese nobleman, a Carmelite nun, and a mysterious look-alike.
12 May 1927
A pilot crashes and a beautiful countess of a castle nearby nurses him to health.
04 December 1924
Stop-motion photography blends with extreme slow-motion in Clair's first and most dada film, composed of a series of zany, interconnected scenes.
16 March 1950
Henri Faust, retiring after 50 years as a professor in a circa-1700 French university, despairs at the ravages of old age .
14 November 1952
A daydreaming French composer sees himself as a fine figure dashing through history.
31 March 1944
A young turn-of-the-century newspaper man finds he can get hold of the next day's paper. This brings more problems than fortune, especially as his new girlfriend is part of a phony clairvoyant act.
01 January 1925
A night watchman on the Eiffel Tower wakes up to find the entire population of the city frozen in place.
15 October 2024
As a gay actor’s friends are murdered one by one, he is recruited by a private investigator to help set a trap for the killer responsible: The Bedroom Butcher.
04 December 1928
Garadoux has beaten his wife. His lawyer Fremissin is young and very shy, and therefore, not very efficient.
07 July 1941
In old New Orleans, a beautiful adventuress juggles the attentions of a rich banker and a dashing sea captain.
18 December 1931
In this classic French satire, Louis, a convict, escapes from prison and takes on legitimate work, making his way up in the business world.
21 May 1947
Emile is a French film producer at the beginning of the century. One of his friends leaves his daughter Lucette in his house, when he is starting a tour through France.
28 April 1930
In the tenement slums of Paris between the world wars, impoverished street singer Albert yearns for beautiful Romanian immigrant Pola.
16 September 1960
The seven stages in the life of the modern Frenchwomen are disclosed by seven directors in a witty way: 1 - Childhood, 2 - Adolescence, 3 - Virginity, 4 - Marriage, 5 - Adultery, 6 - Divorce, 7 - The Single Woman.
01 November 1961
Businessman Victor Hardy wants to buy the entire area around the small village of Cabosse. He claims that he wants to return to nature, but he also intends to profit by selling the water from the village fountain, which is reputed to enhance longevity.
13 March 1925
A young man, unsuccessful in love, manages to leave his body and tours Paris, disembodied and invisible, playing practical jokes: a row of coats walks off from a hotel cloakroom; an unattended taxi drives itself away; a row of top hats appears on the pavement.
17 December 1935
Peggy Martin, daughter of a wealthy American businessman, persuades her father to buy a haunted Scottish castle from Donald Glourie.
21 December 1962
"Les quatre vérités" aka "The Four Truths" is a movie anthology that consists of four segments, all loosely parodying fables from the 17th-century French poet Jean de la Fontaine.
16 October 1934
The Last Billionaire is a 1934 French comedy film directed by René Clair and starring Max Dearly, Marthe Mellot and Renée Saint-Cyr.
01 December 1965
In the 18th century, as the army of Prince De Beaulieu lays siege on the fortress of Marechal D'Allenberg, a young princess sends a soldier out of the fortress to go find her lover.
13 January 1928
On the day of Fadinard's wedding, his horse eats a lady's hat on a bush at the roadside, while the lady is hidden behind the bush with her lover Lieutenant Tavernier.
22 February 1924
The film is based on the bitter rivalry of two pigeon racers, Fred, the bell-ringer of Bruges and Neel, the fiancé of Fred's partially sighted sister.
01 August 1930
Lucienne, typist and gorgeous bathing beauty, decides to enter the 'Miss Europe' pageant sponsored by the French newspaper she works for.
30 April 1926
In a daydream, a shy bank clerk is led by a fairy into a subterranean world where people transform into animals and waxworks come to life.
02 January 1928
A poetic documentary tribute to the famous Eiffel tower, built for the 1889 World Fair and intended to have been destroyed 20 years later.
01 January 1920
Loie Fuller, in her 1920 feature-length film Le Lys de la vie, […] explored the new technique for poetic ends, creating fleeting, dreamlike images that "freed" the medium from "illusionism" and imbued it with fantasy.
01 January 1967
Collective contribution to a history of cinema, this issue of the “Civilisations” collection alse
