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Jacques Feyder

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Name
  
Jacques Feyder


Role
  
Actor

Jacques Feyder Jacques Feyder Director Films as Director Other

Full Name
  
Jacques Leon Louis Frederix

Born
  
21 July 1885 (
1885-07-21
)
Ixelles, Belgium

Died
  
May 24, 1948, Prangins, Switzerland

Spouse
  
Francoise Rosay (m. 1917–1948)

Children
  
Paul Feyder, Marc Feyder, Bernard Farrel

Movies
  
Carnival in Flanders, Faces of Children, L'Atlantide, Le Grand Jeu, Pension Mimosas

Similar People
  
Francoise Rosay, Jean Forest, Charles Spaak, Jean Gremillon, Pierre Richard‑Willm

Gribiche [Mother of Mine] (Jacques Feyder, 1926) (Français/English)


Gribiche (Jacques Feyder, 1926)


Jacques Feyder ([fɛ.dɛʁ]; 21 July 1885 – 24 May 1948) was a Belgian actor, screenwriter and film director who worked principally in France, but also in the USA, Britain and Germany. He was a leading director of silent films during the 1920s, and in the 1930s he became associated with the style of poetic realism in French cinema. He adopted French nationality in 1928.

Contents

Jacques Feyder Jacques Feyder Catalogue des restaurations et tirages

Career

Jacques Feyder media2webbritannicacomebmedia89118890041

Born Jacques Léon Louis Frédérix in Ixelles, Belgium, he was educated at the École régimentaire in Nivelles, and was destined for a military career. At age twenty-five however he moved to Paris where he pursued an interest in acting, first on stage and then in film, adopting the name Jacques Feyder. He joined the Gaumont Film Company and in 1914 he became an assistant director with Gaston Ravel. He started directing films for Gaumont in 1916, but his career was interrupted by service with the Belgian army during 1917-1919.

Jacques Feyder Jacques FEYDER Biographie et filmographie

After the end of the war, he returned to filmmaking and quickly built a reputation as one of the most innovative directors in French cinema. L'Atlantide (1921) (based on the novel by Pierre Benoit), and Crainquebille (1922) (from the novel by Anatole France) were his first major films to achieve public and critical attention. He followed these with Visages d'enfants (filmed in 1923 but not released until 1925) which proved to be one of his most personal and enduring films. Shortly after this, Feyder was offered a post as artistic director of a new film company, Vita Films, in Vienna, along with a contract to make three films. He made L'Image (Das Bildnis) (1923), but the company failed and he returned to Paris. He re-established himself with Gribiche (1926) and the literary adaptations of Carmen (1926) and Thérèse Raquin (1928). He also contributed screenplays of films for other directors, notably Poil de carotte (1925) for Julien Duvivier, and Gardiens de phare (1929) for Jean Grémillon. His last silent film in France was Les Nouveaux Messieurs, a topical political satire which provoked calls for it to be banned in France for "insulting the dignity of parliament and its ministers".

Jacques Feyder Film director Jacques Feyder Hollywoods starmaker from once

By this time Feyder had accepted an offer from MGM to work in Hollywood, where in 1929 his first project was directing Greta Garbo in The Kiss, her last silent film. It was in Hollywood that he made the transition to sound films; even before he had worked with sound films, Feyder declared himself to be a firm believer in their future, in contrast with some of his French contemporaries. In 1930, he directed Jetta Goudal in her only French language film made in Hollywood, Le Spectre vert. His subsequent work in the USA consisted mainly of directing foreign-language versions of American films, including a German version of Anna Christie, again with Garbo.

Jacques Feyder Jacques Feyder July 21 1885 May 24 1948 Belgian actor

Disillusioned with the Hollywood system, Feyder returned to France in 1933. During the next three years he made three of his most successful films, all of them in collaboration with screenwriter Charles Spaak and featuring Françoise Rosay in a leading role. Le Grand Jeu (1934) and Pension Mimosas (1935) were both significant creations in the style of poetic realism; La Kermesse héroïque (1935) (also known as Carnival in Flanders) was a meticulously staged period film with contemporary political resonances, which earned Feyder several international awards.

Jacques Feyder Amazoncom Rediscover Jacques Feyder French Film Master Queen of

Feyder went on to direct films in England and Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II, but with diminishing success. Following the Nazi occupation in 1940, which led to the banning of La Kermesse héroïque, he left France for the safety of Switzerland, and directed a last film there, Une femme disparaît (1942).

In 1917, Feyder had married Parisian-born actress Françoise Rosay (1891–1974) with whom he had three sons; she acted in many of his films and collaborated with him as writer and assistant director on Visages d'enfants. Jacques Feyder died in 1948 at Prangins, Switzerland, and he was buried in the Cimetière de Sorel Moussel, Eure et Loir, France. A school (lycée) in Épinay-sur-Seine in the north of Paris was named in his honour in 1977; Épinay was the location of the Tobis film studios where Feyder made Le Grand Jeu and Pension Mimosas.

Reputation

In 1944 Feyder and Françoise Rosay published Le Cinéma, notre métier, an autobiographical memoir of their work together in the cinema, in which Feyder stated that he regarded himself as an artisan, a craftsman of filmmaking. Some critics have been content to take him at his word and to look no further for any underlying vision of the world. He was however insistent upon his creative independence, demonstrated by his willingness to make his films in so many different countries if the conditions of production appeared favourable. Recurrent themes in his work include the reckless love of a mysterious or unknown woman (L'Atlantide, L'Image, Carmen, Le Grand Jeu), the gap between reality and the vision that someone has of it (Crainquebille, Gribiche, Les Nouveaux Messieurs, La Kermesse héroïque), and maternal love (Gribiche, Visages d'enfants, Pension Mimosas).

His style was characterised by a classical balance and moderation, composition of images that was beautiful without becoming gratuitous, and a sympathetic rapport with actors. Above all his films achieved an atmosphere of realism, whether through the accumulation of judiciously chosen detail, the use of location shooting, or the use of elaborately designed sets; (he worked closely with Lazare Meerson on several of his films). In this respect, his adherence to a realistic tradition in French cinema was contrasted with the 'impressionist' style of some contemporaries in the 1920s such as Abel Gance, Marcel L'Herbier, and Jean Epstein, and it pointed the way to the vogue for poetic realism which found its fullest expression in the films of Marcel Carné: Carné worked as assistant director to Feyder in the mid-1930s.

Feyder's relatively early death may have contributed to a fading of interest in his films, reinforced by the hostility of some influential critics associated with Cahiers du cinéma in the 1950s. His younger contemporary René Clair judged in 1970, "Jacques Feyder does not occupy today the place his work and his example should have earned him". Any subsequent reassessment has tended to be hampered by the limited availability of his films in English-speaking countries, with the exception of La Kermesse héroïque which some reckon to have aged less well than other examples of his work. These factors have contributed to a sometimes ambivalent attitude to his work as a whole.

Filmography

Director
1946
Macadam
1943
Matura-Reise (supervising)
1942
Portrait of a Woman
1939
La loi du nord
1938
Fahrendes Volk
1938
Les gens du voyage
1937
Knight Without Armor
1936
Die klugen Frauen
1935
Carnival in Flanders
1935
Pension Mimosas
1934
Le grand jeu
1931
Son of India
1931
Big House (replaced during production)
1931
Daybreak
1930
Anna Christie
1930
Si l'empereur savait ça
1930
Olympia
1930
Le spectre vert
1929
The Kiss
1929
Les nouveaux messieurs
1928
Thérèse Raquin
1926
Au pays du roi lépreux (Short)
1926
Carmen
1926
Mother of Mine
1925
Mother
1923
Das Bildnis
1922
Crainquebille
1921
Missing Husbands
1918
La faute d'orthographe (Short)
1917
Le frère de lait (Short)
1917
Le ravin sans fond (co-director)
1917
Les vieilles femmes de l'hospice (Short)
1917
Le billard cassé (Short)
1917
L'instinct est maître
1916
Abrégeons les formalités (Short)
1916
Biscot se trompe d'étage (Short)
1916
L'homme de compagnie (Short)
1916
La pièce de dix sous (Short)
1916
La trouvaille de Buchu (Short)
1916
Le bluff (Short)
1916
Le destin est maître (Short)
1916
Le pardessus de demi-saison (Short)
1916
Le pied qui étreint
1916
Monsieur Pinson policier (Short) (co-director)
1916
Tiens, vous êtes à Poitiers? (Short)
1916
Un conseil d'ami (Short)
1916
Têtes de femmes, femmes de tête (Short)
Writer
1954
Flesh and the Woman (story "Le Grand Jeu")
1942
Portrait of a Woman (screenplay)
1939
La loi du nord (scenario)
1938
Fahrendes Volk (writer)
1938
Les gens du voyage (screenplay)
1935
Carnival in Flanders (uncredited)
1935
Pension Mimosas
1934
Le grand jeu (screenplay)
1930
Si l'empereur savait ça (writer)
1929
The Lighthouse Keepers (writer)
1929
Les nouveaux messieurs (writer)
1926
Carmen
1926
Mother of Mine
1925
Poil de carotte (adaptation)
1925
Mother (scenario)
1922
Crainquebille (writer)
1921
Missing Husbands (adaptation)
1918
La faute d'orthographe (Short) (scenario)
Actor
1916
La faute de Pierre Vaisy (Short)
1916
Monsieur Pinson policier (Short)
1916
Quand minuit sonna (Short)
1916
The Vampires: Dead Man's Escape (Short)(uncredited)
1915
Autour d'une bague (Short)
1915
La pépite d'or (Short)
1915
Le troisième larron (Short)
1915
Les vampires (episode V: L'évasion du mort)
1915
Protéa III ou La course à la mort
1913
Le trait d'union (Short)
1913
Protéa as
Un diplomate
1912
Cinderella or The Glass Slipper (Short) as
Le Prince
Editor
1926
Carmen
1925
Mother
1917
L'instinct est maître
Art Director
1925
Mother
1922
Crainquebille
Producer
1942
Portrait of a Woman (producer)
1928
Thérèse Raquin (producer)
Assistant Director
1915
Des pieds et des mains (Short) (assistant director)
Miscellaneous
1943
Matura-Reise (supervisor)
Thanks
2012
Blancanieves (the director wishes to thank)
Archive Footage
2021
Le drôle de drame de Marcel Carné (TV Movie documentary) as
Self
1978
Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma (TV Series documentary) as
Self
- Le Cinéma et son temps: Les Années 20 ou Le Temps des illusions (1978) - Self

References

Jacques Feyder Wikipedia