René Clair

Director & actor · born 11 November 1898 · Paris, France

René Clair was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the UK and USA for more than a decade. Returning to France after World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie française in 1960. Clair's best known films include The Italian Straw Hat (1928), Under the Roofs of Paris (1930), Le Million (1931), À nous la liberté (1931), I Married a Witch (1942), and And Then There Were None (1945).

In 1924, while Clair was working on Ciné-sketch for the theatre with France Picabia, he first met a young actress, Bronja Perlmutter, who subsequently appeared in his film Le Voyage imaginaire (1926) premiered at the newly opened Studio des Ursulines. They married in 1926, and their son, Jean-François, was born in 1927.

Where to start: And Then There Were None (1945).