Alexandre Astruc

Alongside his extensive critical and literary work, Astruc directed a series of highly literate feature films between 1955 and 1968 before working extensively in television.

The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is film theory, film criticism and film direction. Places of work recorded in the authority are France. Distinctions recorded are Roger Nimier Prix, René Clair Award, Louis Delluc Prize and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.

• Name — Alexandre Astruc • Born — 13 July 1923 • Died — 19 May 2016 • Genre — film director journalist, novelist • Awards — René Clair Award

Astruc was born on 13 July 1923 in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. His parents were both journalists. He completed degrees in law and arts. After the Liberation of Paris in 1944, he became a figure of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés intellectual scene and a close associate of Jean-Paul Sartre, Boris Vian, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. He published his first novel, Les Vacances, with Gallimard in 1945, and worked as a literary and film critic for Combat, L'Écran français, and other publications. In March 1948, Astruc published "Naissance d'une nouvelle avant-garde: la caméra-stylo" in L'Écran français. The essay argued that cinema was outgrowing its role as spectacle or filmed theatre and becoming a language in its own right, one through which a filmmaker could express thoughts, philosophy, and abstract ideas as directly as a novelist could with prose. The concept of the caméra-stylo became foundational to subsequent theorising about the director as author, and was a direct precursor to the politique des auteurs developed by the Cahiers du cinéma critics in the 1950s, though it remained a distinct idea concerned with personal cinematic expression rather than the reappraisal of directors working within the studio system. In the same period, Astruc co-founded the film society Objectif 49 with André Bazin, under the honorary presidency of Jean Cocteau. Objectif 49 organised the Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz in 1949, which brought together many of the young cinéphiles who would form the New Wave. He also contributed to La Gazette du cinéma, the short-lived journal edited by Éric Rohmer that gave Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette their first published criticism, and to Cahiers du Cinéma from 1951.

Astruc worked as an assistant director to Marc Allégret and Marcel Achard in 1946–1947 before attempting to put his theoretical ideas into practice. His second short film was Ulysse ou les Mauvaises Rencontres (1949), a burlesque parody of Homer's Odyssey shot at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. Co-written with Jean Cau and Anne-Marie Cazalis, the film featured an array of prominent Saint-Germain-des-Prés intellectual and artistic figures in its cast, including Jean Cocteau as Homer, Jean Genet as the Cyclops, Boris Vian as a Lotus-eater, and Christian Bérard as Neptune. Though the film is now considered lost and left little material footprint, it marked his initial transition from critic to filmmaker. His first major breakthrough as a director came with Le Rideau cramoisi (1952), a 44-minute adaptation of a story by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly starring Anouk Aimée. The film contained no spoken dialogue, relying instead on voice-over narration and the cinematography of Eugen Schüfftan to tell the story of a doomed love affair. It won the Prix Louis-Delluc. His debut feature, Les Mauvaises Rencontres (1955), used layered flashbacks to chronicle a young woman's navigation of post-war Parisian society. The film won the award for Most Promising New Director at the 16th Venice International Film Festival. Une Vie (1958), an adaptation of Guy de Maupassant photographed by Claude Renoir, drew praise from Godard in Cahiers du Cinema for its rigour and simplicity. La Proie pour l'ombre (1961), starring Annie Girardot, explored female autonomy and marital power in a contemporary setting. His final theatrical features were L'Éducation sentimentale (1962), after Gustave Flaubert, and two war films, La Longue Marche (1966) and Flammes sur l'Adriatique (1968). In 1994, the Académie française awarded him the René Clair Award for his lifetime body of cinematic work. Although the New Wave filmmakers acknowledged Astruc as a pioneer, his commitment to literary adaptation and formal elegance increasingly placed him at a distance from the movement's rawer, more improvisatory direction after 1959. From the late 1960s, he worked in television, directing adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe, Honoré de Balzac, and others, as well as the three-hour documentary Sartre par lui-même (1976), an extended filmed interview with his old friend Sartre and Beauvoir. Astruc continued to publish novels and memoirs throughout his life, including La Tête la première (1975), Le Serpent jaune (1977), Le Roman de Descartes (1989), and Le Montreur d'ombres (1996). He was appointed Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He died on 19 May 2016 in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, aged 92.

• Year — Title — English title — Notes • 1948 — Aller et retour — short film • 1949 — Ulysse ou les Mauvaises Rencontres — short film • 1952 — Le Rideau cramoisi — The Crimson Curtain — medium-length film; Prix Louis-Delluc • 1955 — Les Mauvaises Rencontres — Bad Liaisons — Most Promising New Director, Venice • 1958 — Une Vie — End of Desire • 1961 — La Proie pour l'ombre — Shadow of Adultery • 1962 — L'Éducation sentimentale — after Gustave Flaubert • 1965 — Évariste Galois — short film • 1966 — La Longue Marche • 1968 — Flammes sur l'Adriatique • 1976 — Sartre par lui-même — Sartre by Himself — documentary; co-directed with Michel Contat

• Year — Title — Notes • 1963 — Le Puits et le pendule — after Edgar Allan Poe • 1978 — Louis XI ou la naissance d'un roi • 1980 — Arsène Lupin joue et perd — mini-series • 1981 — La Chute de la maison Usher — after Edgar Allan Poe • 1989 — Une fille d'Ève — after Honoré de Balzac • 1993 — Albert Savarus — after Honoré de Balzac

Alexandre Astruc is recorded as film director, screenwriter, writer, actor and novelist.