Henri-Georges Clouzot

Once touted as the "French Alfred Hitchcock," filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot was known as much for his turbulent personal life as for his indelible contributions to modern cinema. After making his debut with the uncharacteristically light-hearted mystery "The Murderer Lives at Number 21" (1942), Clouzot drew the ire of both the Vichy press and the resistance movement of occupied France for his grim drama "The Raven" (1943). Condemned as a collaborator, due to the latter film's perceived negative depiction of the French people, Clouzot was banned from filmmaking for life after France's liberation. With the help of such supporters as Jean-Paul Sartre, the sentence was reduced to two years, allowing the writer-director to mount a comeback with a string of well-received projects. His acknowledged masterpieces came in the next decade with the nail-biting tale of suspense, "Wages of Fear" (1952) followed by the claustrophobic thriller "Diabolique" (1955). A rare documentary, focusing on the life and work of his longtime acquaintance, "The Mystery of Picasso" (1956), and a psychological drama starring Brigitte Bardot, "The Truth" (1960), brought Clouzot into the next decade. By that time, however, the influential film critics of Cahiers du Cinema, had dismissed the established filmmaker's work as facile, unimportant entertainments. Although chronic illness and personal hardships kept him from regaining his vaunted status during his lifetime, history would soon place Clouzot as one of the most influential and important filmmakers of the 20th-Century.