Christian-Jaque

Biography: life and films

Christian-Jaque is one of France's most prolific and successful film directors. In a career spanning 53 years, he directed 59 feature films for cinema and around the same number of programmes and films for television. His output was as diverse as it was profuse and he worked with some of French cinema's biggest names, including Fernandel, Jean Marais, Gérard Philipe, Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon. He had his fair share of misfires but many of his films proved to be massive hits at the French box office. He started out by making lightweight comedies in the 1930s but he soon moved on to more serious material and delivered such enduring classics as Les Disparus de Saint-Agil (1938) and Fanfan la Tulipe (1952). One of the pillars of the so-called quality tradition of French cinema of the 1940s and '50s, Christian-Jaque fell from grace with the arrival of the French New Wave, and the quality of his work showed a marked decline in later years, with the result that he became fodder for the critics and ended up working for television.

Christian-Jaque's real name is Christian Albert François Maudet. He was born in Paris, France on 4th September 1904, the son of a foundry director, Édouard Maudet. After studying architecture at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris he began his career by designing film posters for the American company First National in collaboration with Jacques Chabraison. The two men signed their work Christian-Jaque, a name made up from their two first names. Maudet kept the name for his subsequent career after the men had gone their separate ways. In 1926, Maudet began working as a journalist on the revue paper Cinégraph.

Under the name Christian-Jaque, Maudet first had an impact in cinema as a set designer. Between 1927 and 1931, he worked on around fifteen films in this capacity, beginning with Henry Roussell's Une java (1928). André Hugon employed him on nine of his films - notably La Grande passion (1928) - and he had three collaborations with Julien Duvivier, including Au bonheur des dames (1930). Having made his directing debut with Le Bidon d'or (1932), Christian-Jaque directed several shorts including his first film with Fernandel, a comedy titled Ça colle (1933). It was with Fernandel that Christian-Jaque had his first big successes as a director - Un de la légion (1936), François Ier (1937), Raphaël le tatoué (1939). In total, he worked with the comedy giant on eight features, although he abandoned work on their final collaboration (Don Camillo et les contestataires) when Fernandel fell ill midway through production and died not long afterwards. In these early years, Christian-Jaque had the honour of directing the famous chansonnier Mistinguett in her final film, Rigolboche (1936), and Sacha Guitry enlisted his help as a co-director on Les Perles de la couronne (1937).

With a string of popular comedies under his belt, Christian-Jaque gravitated to more serious fare with Les Disparus de Saint-Agil (1938), an atmospheric mystery thriller that brought together Erich von Stroheim and Michel Simon. This was followed by L'Enfer des anges (1941) a grim social-realist drama which is one of his bleakest films. With his country under Nazi occupation, Christian-Jaque thrived as a director of lavish mainstream productions. For the German run company Continental he made one of his best films, the murder mystery L'Assassinat du père Noël (1941), and an extravagant biopic of Hector Berlioz, La Symphonie fantastique (1942) that was one of his greatest successes. In Spain and Italy, he filmed Carmen (1945) with Viviane Romance and Jean Marais, and then he made one of his most poetic films, Sortilèges (1944), scripted by Jacques Prévert. Towards the end of WWII he took a break from directing and served in the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).

After the Liberation, Christian-Jaque scored a hit with his inspired adaptation of a Guy de Maupassant story, Boule de suif (1945), which gave Micheline Presle one of her finest screen roles. He then directed Louis Jouvet for his grand return to cinema after the war in Un revenant (1946), a darkly atmospheric melodrama featuring a memorable turn from François Périer. In 1948, he delivered a solid adaptation of Stendhal's La Chartreuse de Parme, starring his then wife Renée Faure and Gérard Philipe, and D'homme à hommes (1948), an impressive portrait of the Red Cross founder Heni Dunant, played by Jean-Louis Barrault. After the accomplished anthology film Souvenirs perdus (1950), Christian-Jaque made his first colour film - Barbe-Bleue (1951), a light-hearted take on Charles Perrault's fairytale featuring an outrageously over-the-top turn from Pierre Brasseur.

Then came one of the films that Christian-Jaque is best known for - the lavish swashbuckler Fanfan la Tulipe (1952). Starring Gérard Philipe, this attracted an audience of 6.7 million in France and received the director's prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1952. It also won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival that same year. In Adorables créatures (1952), another anthology piece, Christian-Jaque worked with Martine Carole for the first time and adopted her as his muse for many of his subsequent films. Taking Carole as his wife in 1954, the director made good use of her sensual allure and acting prowess in a series of impressively made period films, including Lucrèce Borgia (1953), Madame Du Barry (1954) and Nana (1955). He also gave a young Jean-Louis Trintignant a memorable part in Si tous les gars du monde (1956), an unusual but worthy film appealing for international solidarity at the start of the Cold War. In La loi c'est la loi (1958), he brought together two great comedy icons, Fernandel and his Italian counterpart Totò.

By the late 1950s, Christian-Jaque's reputation was beginning to take a severe knock. He was an easy target for critics, including those who went on to became the directors of the French New Wave, and by the mid-1960s he was looking distinctly depassé. Struggling to keep up with the times, he parachuted Brigitte Bardot into the daftest of wartime comedies, Babette s'en va-t-en guerre (1959), and only just redeemed himself with another swashbuckler, La Tulipe noire (1964), helped out by Alain Delon in a demanding dual role. After production ambitions totally scuppered the insane superproduction Marco Polo, Christian-Jaque's directing career sank ever deeper into mediocrity, culminating in what is probably his worst film, Les Pétroleuses (1971), with Bardot and Claudia Cardinale teaming up for the lamest of western spoofs.

After La Vie parisienne (1977), he turned his back on cinema altogether and devoted himself fully to a career in French television. In the 1970s and '80s, Christian-Jaque directed several serials and television films for television, including La Nouvelle malle des Indes (1981) and L'Homme de Suez (1983). He concluded his career in 1985 with a television homage to director Marcel Carné entitled Carné, l'homme à la caméra (1985). That same year he was given an honorary César for his life's work. He died from a heart attack in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France on 8th July 1994, aged 89 and is now buried at Père-Lachaise cemetary in Paris.

Filmography

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