Georges Franju (1912 - 1987)
Related: French cinema - director
Titles: Eyes without a Face (1959) - The Blood of the Beasts (1949)
Biography
Georges Franju (April 12, 1912 - November 5, 1987) was a French filmmaker.
He was born in Fougères, France.
Franju was one of the cofounders of the Cinémathèque Française. His first film was a 1949 documentary short, Le Sang des bêtes. Le Sang des bêtes was shot in a Parisian slaughterhouse. It demonstrated Franju's ability to combine the poetic and the graphic and revealed Franju's ability to perceive the cruel and the uncanny within a realistic setting. Franju is best known for his 1960 horror film, Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face). Described by Pauline Kael as "[p]erhaps the most elegant horror movie ever made," Eyes Without a Face is the story of a mad doctor played by Pierre Brasseur and his efforts to replace the face of his disfigured daughter, played by Edith Scob, with the faces of murdered women.
Georges Franju passed away on November 5, 1987 in Paris. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Franju [Apr 2005]
An acute perception of the cruel and the uncanny
An original figure in French cinema, Franju worked in set design and scientific film and was one of the cofounders of the Cinémathèque Française. His first documentary short, Le Sang des bêtes (1949), shot in a Parisian slaughterhouse, had an enormous impact, revealing Franju's acute perception of the cruel and the uncanny within a realistic setting, as did Hôtel des Invalides (1952). This prepared the terrain for his best-known features which, rarely for French cinema, worked within the genre of the "fantastic," especially Les Yeux sans visage / Eyes Without a Face (1960) and Judex (1963), a tribute to Louis Feuillade's 1917 series (Franju also directed a film on Georges Méliès in 1952). Among his other features are some distinguished literary adaptations, notably Thérèse Desqueyroux (1962, based on François Mauriac) and Thomas l'imposteur / Thomas the Impostor (1965, based on Jean Cocteau). He also worked in television.-— Ginette Vincendeau, Encylopedia of European Cinema
Le Grand Melies (1952) [...]
Le Grand Melies (1952) The life of Georges Melies, is told in this biodrama directed by Georges Franju.Meanwhile, at Amazon
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