Carné, Marcel

Carné, Marcel (1909-1996), French film director. Born Albert Cranche in Paris, he worked as an insurance clerk and journalist, then became an assistant to the Belgian director Jacques Feyder on Les Nouveaux Messieurs (1928; The New Gentlemen), and to René Clair on Sous les Toits de Paris (1930; Under the Roofs of Paris). In 1936 he directed his first feature film, Jenny, which marked the beginning of a long and successful collaboration with the poet Jacques Prévert, who wrote many scripts for him and whose name has long been associated with his.

Carné’s journalistic training was reflected in the style of his early films: he set out to portray the simple lives of ordinary people in their everyday environment. He was influenced by the aesthetics of Max Reinhardt, which put an emphasis on psychological subtleties rather than grandiloquent dramas. He was also interested in the Expressionism of film-makers such as Friedrich W. Murnau and Josef von Sternberg. However, his characteristic realism was always tempered by his own poetical sensitivity and his taste for unrequited love and the world of the working class.

After the burlesque comedy Drôle de Drame (1937; Bizarre, Bizarre), Carné directed three atmospheric melodramas—Quai des Brumes (1938; Port of Shadows), Hôtel du Nord (1938), and Le Jour se Lève (1939; Daybreak)—that have come to define French pre-war cinema. Quai des Brumes and Le Jour se Lève were graced by luminous performances by Jean Gabin.

Unlike his contemporaries, Clair and Renoir, Carné chose to remain in France and continued working during the German occupation of the country in World War II. In 1942 he had a huge success with Les Visiteurs du Soir (The Devil’s Envoys), which was widely perceived as being an allegory for the French resisting the Germans. Over the next three years he worked on the remarkable Les Enfants du Paradis (1945; Children of Paradise), a landmark in cinema history, in which the brilliantly developed themes are portrayed by an exceptional cast. Indeed, the best actors of the time, such as Louis Jouvet, Jean-Louis Barrault, Michel Simon, Pierre Brasseur, and Arletty, played an important part in the success of his films.

Still in his mid-30s, Carné seemed set to become one of the great film-makers of post-war cinema, but almost like a character in one of his own films, the fates conspired against him. Carné’s later work failed to maintain these high standards, and films such as Thérèse Raquin (1953; The Adulteress) did not meet with the same audience approval. No longer championed by the critics who put their weight behind the French nouvelle vague (New Wave) led by Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, Carné, with his preference for studio shooting and abhorrence of improvisation, was held up as encapsulating everything the new generation of film-makers wanted to reject.

Nevertheless, Carné was awarded the Grand Prix Oecuménique at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977, and was made a Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur and a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 1995 he received the European Film Academy’s Life Achievement Award.