Yves Allégret

Biography: life and films

Yves Allégret was born on 13th October 1905 in Asnières-sur-Seine, France. He was the younger brother of the film director Marc Allégret, who gave him his first job as an assistant on Les Amours de minuit (1931). Before he began making his own films, he worked in various capacities with several distinguished film directors of the time, most notably as an assistant to Jean Renoir on Partie de campagne (1936). The influence of Renoir's impressionistic style can be seen in many of Allégret's films. Yves Allégret also worked as a costume designer on Claude Autant-Lara's Ciboulette (1933) and screenwriter on two films for Léo Joannon: Vous n'avez rien à déclarer? (1937) and L'Émigrante (1940). He associated himself with the surrealists (another key artistic influence) and joined the Groupe Octobre, a left-wing theatre troupe of the 1930s, whose members included Jacques Prévert, Jean-Louis Barrault and Claude Autant-Lara. Around this time, he started making short films, including: Ténériffe (1932), Prix et profits ou La pomme de terre (1934) and Jeunes filles en France (1934). He was about to embark on his first full-length film when he was called up, following the declaration of war in 1939.

In 1941 Yves Allégret directed his first feature, a comedy titled Tobie est un ange, starring Janine Darcey, Pierre Brasseur and Rellys; sadly the negative of the film was destroyed in a fire. His next short film was extended into a full-length film, Les Deux timides, which he released in 1943 under the name Yves Champlain. This was followed by the comedy La Boîte aux rêves (1945) and a war film, Les Démons de l'aube (1946). Allégret then directed the three films which brought him immediate critical attention and established his reputation as a serious filmmaker: Dédée d'Anvers (1948), Une si jolie petite plage (1949) and Manèges (1950). This was to be the creative highpoint of Allégret's career, a trilogy of film noir masterpieces that combined the bleak poetic realist style of the 1930s with the present-day fad for existentialism. Two of the films star Simone Signoret, to whom Yves Allégret was married between 1944 and 1949; their daughter Catherine Allégret would become a well-known actress. Allégret's association with the existentialist movement was reinforced when he made Les Orgueilleux (1953), an impressive adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's novel Typhus.

After this brief but inspired period, Yves Allégret's career showed a marked decline and comprised mainly populist genre films such as Chien de pique (1960), a limp vehicle for Eddie Constantine, and Quand la femme s'en mêle (1957), the film in which Alain Delon made his screen debut (as a hired hitman). Allégret was able to partly redeem himself with a few hard-hitting realist dramas - La Meilleure part (1955) and Germinal (1963) - but his best work was long behind him and he was soon forgotten by the critics. One possible explanation for Allégret's sudden creative decline in the mid-1950s was the tragic loss of his son Gilles, who was killed in a car accident at the age of 19 in 1955. Towards the end of his career, Allégret worked on several series for French television, including: Graine d'ortie (1973) and Les Enquêtes du commissaire Maigret (1979-1981). His final film was the lacklustre comedy Mords pas, on t'aime (1976) which starred his daughter Catherine - an ignominious end to a career that promised so much more. Yves Allégret died in Paris on 31st January 1987. He is buried alongside his third wife Michèle Cordoue in the cemetary of Jouars-Pontchartrain,Yvelines, on the outskirts of Paris.

Filmography

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