Christian-Jaque

Former film critic (for CINEGRAF magazine), poster artist and art director turned successful director. His feature output, beginning in 1931 with the medium-length feature, "Bidon d'or," has been generally light and much of it fairly routine, but Christian-Jaque was a skilled and supple craftsman with a piquant visual eye who at his best could tell a story with an adult grace and considerable panache. Among Christian-Jaque's most notable films are "Les Pirates du rail" (1937), an exciting railroad melodrama which compares well with Hollywood action standards; the offbeat and poetic "Les Disparus de Saint Agil/Boys' School" (1938) with surrealist touches and a sense of childhood fantasy peppering an unusual mix of satire and murder mystery set at a boys school; "L'Assassinat de Pere Noel/Who Killed Santa Claus?" (1941), another strangely dreamlike film, with dark undertones, about the disappearance of an elderly storytelling mapmaker; and "Boule de suif" (1945), a handsomely wrought and intelligent retelling of Guy de Maupassant's story of the disparate effects a prostitute has on a motley group of people traveling by coach updated to WWII.