*1896 FR
French director and screenwriter born October 8, 1896 in Lille. On the advice of Pierre Bertin, he enters the Théâtre de l'Odéon in 1916. He became an inventor of an universe of images where the most raw realism and often very black is penetrated with an unusual fantasy. After the Second World War, he gave an equally pessimistic representation of French society, which he showed dominated by hypocrisy, narrow clericalism, pettiness and female deception. Mainly active from 1930 to 1960, he died October 29, 1967 in Paris.