Background
Jacques Feyder was born on 21 July 1885 in Ixelles, Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest, Belgium.
Jacques Feyder was born on 21 July 1885 in Ixelles, Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest, Belgium.
An actor originally, he worked for Louis Feuil- lade. Wounded in the First World War, he roamed around France, Switzerland, and Austria; wrote Poil de Carotte (25, Julien Duvivier); and in 1929 went to Hollywood.
He did not last long there, and after some work on foreign language versions and two Ramon Novarro films—Son of India and Daybreak—he worked in France, England, and Germany before the outbreak of war. He went to Switzerland and made Une Femme Disparaît, and in 1946 he collaborated on Macadam (Marcel Blistène).
There was a time when Feyder was claimed as a great realist director, when Kermesse Héroïque was thought of as an important French film. It looks now like an intolerably pretty Dutch interior, proof that as fine a photographer as Harry Stradling can be reduced to inertia if asked simply to produce exquisite shots. Feyder is more interesting as a sympathetic director of women in fanciful material—his wale Françoise Rosay in several films, Garbo in The Kiss and the German Anna Christie. Dietrich in (he dotty Knight Without Armor—Tom Milne has noted Feeder's the matic pursuit of the woman who means different things to different men. And il overshadowed by such as Vertigo, Lola Montés, and Elena et les Hommes, Feyder may be unfairly neglected today just as once he was injudiciously acclaimed.