Duvivier, Julien

Duvivier, Julien (1896-1967), French film director and screenwriter in the classic tradition. He was born in Lille, and dropped out of university to become an actor. Finding he lacked stage presence, he turned to directing, first for the theatre and then, in 1919, for the cinema. During the silent period Duvivier directed some 20 films, most notably Poil de Carotte (1925; Carrot-Top), a sensitive study of childhood, and Au Bonheur des Dames (1929; Ladies’ Delight), an atmospheric adaptation of a work by Émile Zola.

The 1930s were Duvivier’s finest decade. Besides a lively comedy, Allo Berlin? Ici Paris! (1932; Hello Berlin, Paris Calling), and a sound remake of Poil de Carotte (1932) considered even better than the original, he directed a group of films now rated as classics of “poetic realism”: La Bandera (1935), a Foreign Legion story; La Belle Équipe (1936; The Good Bunch), a regretful fable of co-operative endeavour; Un Carnet de Bal (1937; The Dance Card), five stories ingeniously linked by a woman seeking out her old dancing partners; La Fin du Jour (1939; The End of the Day), a bitter-sweet tribute to the theatre—and his masterpiece, Pépé le Moko (1937), set in a vividly evoked Algiers, which established the persona of Duvivier’s frequent leading actor, Jean Gabin, as a doomed hero.

Duvivier spent World War II making films in Hollywood, where he acquitted himself competently, but had trouble re-establishing himself on his return to France. His most commercially successful post-war films were the Don Camillo comedies (1951, 1953), starring the French actor Fernandel as an Italian priest, but Duvivier also returned to his pre-war fatalism with Voici le Temps des Assassins (1956; Deadlier Than the Male), with Gabin, and to Zola with Pot-Bouille (1957). Though he never regained his pre-war critical stature, he continued working steadily until his death in a car crash.