Biography: life and films
Claude Sautet was a French film director and screenwriter.
He was born in Montrouge, France on 23 February 1924 and died in Paris, France on 22 July 2000.
Having graduated from the film school IDHEC, Sautet made his feature
debut as a director in 1951 with the mainstream comedy
Bonjour sourire.
Classe tous risques (1960) was
his first success, but after a similarly routine thriller,
L'Arme
à gauche, he began making the kind of films he is now
best known for, intimate slice-of-life dramas about friendship, family
and love.
Les Choses de la vie is the
first of Sautet's films to bear his unmistakable auteur imprint and was
a notable commercial and critical success. It was the first
occasion he worked with the actress Romy Schneider, the star of four of
his films. After
Max et les ferrailleurs, his
final attempt at a policier, Sautet made what many consider to be his
masterpiece,
César et Rosalie (1972),
a modern take on the eternal triangle with Schneider torn between Sami
Frey and Yves Montand. Over the following decade, Claude Sautet
would come to be regarded as one of France's leading auteur filmmakers,
one with substantial box office appeal.
Une histoire simple (1978) drew
an audience of 2.3 million and garnered Sautet the first of his four
César nominations for Best Director - he finally won the award
with
Un coeur en hiver (1992) and
Nelly
et Monsieur Arnaud (1995). As well as a director,
Sautet was also an accomplished screenwriter, and his writing skills
were sought after by many other filmmakers, including Georges Franju (
Les Yeux sans visage),
Jean-Paul Rappeneau (
La Vie de château) and
Jacques Deray (
Borsalino).
© James Travers 2002
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Filmography
Key: d = director; w = writer; a = actor
Nous n'irons plus au bois (1951) [d,w]
Bonjour sourire (1955) [d]
Le Fauve est lâché (1959) [w]
Classe tous risques (1960) [d,w]
Les Yeux sans visage (1960) [w]
Peau de banane (1963) [w]
Symphonie pour un massacre (1963) [w]
Échappement libre (1964) [w]
L'Âge ingrat (1964) [w]
L'Arme à gauche (1965) [d,w]
Atout coeur à Tokyo pour O.S.S. 117 (1966) [w]
La Vie de château (1966) [w]
Mise à sac (1967) [w]
La Petite vertu (1968) [w]
Sous le signe du taureau (1968) [w]
Le Diable par la queue (1969) [w]
Borsalino (1970) [w]
Les Choses de la vie (1970) [d]
Les Mariés de l'an II (1971) [w]
Max et les ferrailleurs (1971) [d,w]
César et Rosalie (1972) [d,w]
Vincent, François, Paul... et les autres (1974) [d]
Mado (1976) [d,w]
Une histoire simple (1978) [d,w]
Un mauvais fils (1980) [d,w]
Garçon! (1983) [d,w]
Mon ami le traître (1988) [w]
Quelques jours avec moi (1988) [d,w]
Patrick Dewaere (1992) [a]
Un coeur en hiver (1992) [d,w]
Intersection (1994) [w]
Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud (1995) [d,w]
