André Cayatte

Biography: life and films

The distinguished film director André Cayatte was born in the southern French town of Carcassonne, on 3rd February 1909. He was a practising lawyer before he decided to forge a career as a writer and journalist. He published seven books between 1927 and 1939, including Un dur, which won him the Prix Rabelais. His long career in cinema began as a screenwriter on Marc Allégret's Entrée des artistes (1938) and Jean Grémillon's Remorques (1941). He then made his directing debut with the comedy La Fausse maîtresse (1942), based on a novel by Honoré de Balzac. This was the first of four films Cayatte directed for the German run company Continental at the time of the Nazi occupation of France. It was followed by: Au bonheur des dames (1943), Pierre et Jean (1943) and Le Dernier sou (1946).

After the Liberation, Cayatte's association with Continental earned him a temporary ban from working as a filmmaker. He resumed his chosen career a few years later with Sérénade aux nuages and Roger la Honte, one of the biggest hits at the French box office in 1946. Around this time, in partnership with Jacques Prévert, Cayatte made one of his most haunting and poetic films, Les Amants de Vérone (1949), a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet with a neo-realist edge. Then, in 1950, he released Justice est faite, the first in a series of films in which Cayatte would deliver an impassioned critique of the French judicial system. This was followed by Nous sommes tous des assasins (1952), a starkly humane appeal for the abolition of the death penalty. Cayatte continued in the same vein with Avant le déluge (1954) and Le Dossier noir (1955). These were the films that brought him critical acclaim - Justice est faite won him the Golden Lion at the 1950 Venice Film Festival and the Golden Bear at the 1951 Berlin Film Festival; Nous sommes tous des assassins won him the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1952. However, Cayatte also had his detractors, most notably a young firebrand critic on the Cahiers du cinéma named François Truffaut who totally despised him, saying he was lacking in taste, technical skill and sensitivity.

For the rest of his career, Cayatte continued to be intensely preoccupied with social themes. Le Miroir à deux faces (1958) was an attack on cosmetic surgery; Mourir d'aimer (1970), his most controversial film, defended a teacher who was imprisoned after pursuing an illicit love affair with one of her students; Les Risques du métier (1967) warns of the dangers of false testimony, with Jacques Brel playing a teacher wrongly accused of paedophilia. His other work includes Le Passage du Rhin (1960), a poignant wartime drama that gave Charles Aznavour one of his best screen roles and earned Cayatte his second Gold Lion at Venice. In a career that spanned forty years, André Cayatte directed 34 films, his last work for cinema being L'Amour en question (1978). He concluded his career by directing four films for French television. He died from a heart attack in Paris on 6th February 1989, just a few days after his 80th birthday.

Filmography

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