Pierre Chenal
Info
Philippe Cohen, known as Pierre Chenal, is a French director, born December 5, 1904 in Brussels and died December 23, 1990 in La Garenne-Colombes. Chenal occupies an uncomfortable place in the history of French cinema: relatively unknown, he is cataloged as a filmmaker who left only a light body of work. His detailed filmography, however, tends to show the opposite. Made in the 1930s, his first short films were documentaries where the filmmaker used social realism. The Little Trades of Paris (1932) or A French City of Cinema had a didactic ambition which ranked him among the innovators at the time. Throughout his work, Pierre Chenal will maintain this taste for atmospheres tinged with truth where the social is shown. Hence his very marked penchant for adaptations of literary works by his contemporaries: he borrowed from Marcel Aymé the title of one of his first feature films, La rue sans nom (1933); summons Pirandello and The Man from Nowhere (1937); depicts The Mutineers of Elsinore by Jack London; and transforms James Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice to give The Last Turn. Pierre Chenal loves actors and casts the biggest ones. Louis Jouvet, Robert Le Vigan, Michel Simon, Pierre Blanchar, Viviane Romance and Albert Préjean praise his talent. In 1940, the filmmaker's career took a new turn when he retreated, during the war, to Argentina and Chile. He made a few minor films there, then returned to France with comic intentions expressed in Clochemerle (1947). In 1948, Chenal returned to Argentina and adapted Sangre Negra by the American noir novelist Richard Wright. Then, he developed a passion for thrillers and experimented with the genre on several occasions. But Raid on the City (1958), The Beast on the Prowl (1959) and The Assassin Knows the Music (1963) are not considered to be his best films.
Date of Birth
Dec 5, 1904
Place of Birth
Bruxelles, Belgique
Date of Death
Dec 23, 1990
Gender
Male
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Credits
Directing
19701h 30 min
19631h 20 min
19601h 27 min
Writing
Crew
Editing
Acting
Production
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