Jean Grémillon

Biography

Jean Grémillon was a French film director. After directing a number of documentaries during the 1920s, many now lost, Grémillon had his first substantial success with the dramatic feature Maldone in 1928. Over the next quarter-century, he directed twenty more feature films, of which he is best known for five made between 1937 and 1944: Gueule d'amour (1937), L'Étrange M. Victor (1938), Remorques (1941), Lumière d'été (1943), and Le Ciel est à vous (1944), all but the first starring Madeleine Renaud. Grémillon rejected what he referred to as "mechanical naturalism" in favor of "the discovery …