André Hunebelle

Biography: life and films

Although André Hunebelle could hardly be described as a great film director he was incredibly successful in this, his second career. Eight of his films attracted an audience of over three million - an achievement that very few other French film directors have been able to match - and some of his films have come to be regarded as popular classics, notably his Fantômas series. Hunebelle didn't start making films until he was in his early fifties, and yet he was able to direct 35 films in the course of three decades, going head-to-head with the James Bond movies with his OSS 117 films and helping to make Louis de Funès the biggest French actor of his generation. Hunebelle may not have been in the same league as Ingmar Bergman, but he knew how to make films that French cinema audiences would enjoy watching.

André Hunebelle was born on 1st September 1896, in Meudon, in the affluent suburbs of Paris. His was a respectable bourgeois family that had acquired wealth and power in the 19th century, becoming prominent in both business and politics. Hunebelle attended the École Polytechnique in Paris to study mathematics, with a view to following his father's career as an engineer. After the First World War, he instead found work as a decorator and designer before embarking on his first real career as a master glassmaker. So adept was he at this profession that Hunebelle's glassware became highly sought after. He had his first exhibition in 1927 and that same year he opened a shop on the Champs-Élysées in Paris that sold his luxury glass items.

In the early 1940s, Hunebelle needed to find a new job, and through the writer Marcel Achard he was taken on as an art director for the film production company Production Artistique Cinématographique (P.A.C.). He then became a production manager and producer for the same company. Among the films he produced are Maurice Cloche's Feu sacré (1942), starring Viviance Romance, and Georges Lacombe's Florence est folle (1944). After the war, Hunebelle started directing films, beginning with Métier de fous (1948), a now forgotten comedy with Henri Guisol and Jean Tissier.

Hunebelle's first success as a director was Mission à Tanger (1949), an early spy thriller that now looks like a forerunner of the Bond movies. This is the film that started off Michel Audiard's illustrious screenwriting career, and Raymond Rouleau reprised the role he plays here in Hunebelle's later thriller, Méfiez-vous des blondes (1950). The director then returned to comedy with Millionnaires d'un jour (1949), an anthology film with an impressive cast that includes Pierre Brasseur, Ginette Leclerc, Gaby Morlay and Jean Brochard.

By now it was apparent that Hunebelle's talents lay in two very different genres - comedies and thrillers. These would make up the bulk of his subsequent directing output, although his biggest successes (in terms of audience size) was in the period swashbuckling genre. After having notched up one big success with Les Trois Mousquetaires (1953), Hunebelle achieved his best result at the French box office with Le Bossu (1960), attracting an audience of 5.8 million. This was the first of his highly successful collaborations with the actor Jean Marais, who was then at the height of his popularity in swashbucklers of this kind.

Marais headlined two of the director's other period extravaganzas, Le Capitan (1960) and Le Miracle des loups (1961), before taking on a dual role in the series of films for which Hunebelle is now best remembered - his Fantômas trilogy (1964-7). Marais may have had two principal roles in these films (first as the green-skinned alien criminal mastermind, then as the even creepier human journalist) but it was another actor, not yet in his prime, who stole the films - Louis de Funès. Hunebelle had already employed de Funès when he was far less well-known in his 1958 comedy Taxi, roulotte et corrida, but it was Fantômas that made him one of France's biggest stars. Hunebelle's son, Jean Halain, not only scripted many of his father's films, he also worked on a fair number of de Funès comedies.

By the early 1960s, the spy thriller had become a massively popular genre in France, thanks mainly to the success of the first Bond movie, Dr No (1962). France's own answer to 007 was OSS 117 and it was Hunebelle who directed four of his screen outings, beginning with OSS 117 se déchaîne (1963), which was seen by 2.3 million spectators in France. Over time, the subsequent OSS 117 films came to look more like blatant rip-offs of the Bond movies, but, made with less flair and on a much lower budget, they could not compete, so Hunebelle's last film in the series, Pas de roses pour OSS 117 (1968), barely attracted 1.2 million cinemagoers.

His screen career now in decline, Hunebelle lent his talents to French television with the series Joseph Balsamo (1973), returning to cinema to direct the popular troupe Les Charlots in two dismal comedies, Les Quatre Charlots mousquetaires (1974) and Les Charlots en folie (1974). Hunebelle's career finally concluded with Ça fait tilt (1978), a lame comedy with Bernard Menez. Hunebelle then retired to live in the south of France, and died in Nice on 27th November 1985, aged 89.

Filmography

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