Background
Rene Clement was born on March 18, 1913 in Bordeaux, Aquitaine, France. He was a son of Jean Clement and Marguerite Bayle.
Rene Clement was born on March 18, 1913 in Bordeaux, Aquitaine, France. He was a son of Jean Clement and Marguerite Bayle.
He was educated at the School of Architecture in Paris.
Cléments first film was a short, Soigne ton Gauche, in which Jacques Tati acted. He made several more documentaries during the war before his first feature, La Bataille du Rail, a deliberate attempt to revive authenticity after so many allegorical films made under the Occupation. As a tribute to the Resistance it is moving if rather limited, and its stress on accurate reconstruction is more political than artistic.
Les Maudits, however, was a conventional war melodrama, concerning a submarine of Nazis fleeing to South America. Cléments work on Cocteaus La Belle et la Bête (45) was in a technical rather than an artistic capacity and it was only in the 1950s that he began to show a personality of his own .Jeux Interdits is a sensitive study of the effects of war on children. But in Knave of Hearts, filmed in London, Clément suddenly revealed humor and romantic gaiety. The story, of a philandering Gérard Philipe, is enriched by a use of real locations that was years ahead of its time and showed a London largely neglected by British filmmakers. Gervaise was transcribed Zola with the most careful period reconstruction and an early, agonized performance from Maria Schell. The veering from near improvisation to studio re-creation suggested Cléments indecisiveness.
The Sea Wall was another unexpected enteqirise, a version of a Marguerite Duras novel about the tensions within a family, using several American actors. Plein Soleil is a suntanned film noir redolent of the American thriller: indeed, its basis is a Patricia Highsmith novel. The ambiguity of Alain Delon's playing and Henri Decaë’s vivid Mediterranean photography make this the most satisfying film of a director probably at bis best when setting out to entertain. Alter that, Clements work grew dull, and Is Paris Burning? has all the slow caution of an international epic as well as being a sad decline from the raw verity of La Bataille du Bail.
Institute des hautes etudes cinematographiques. Institute (Academy, of Fine Arts) 1986.
In 1940 he married Bella Gurwich. Later, she died. In 1987 he married Johanna Harwood.