Henri-Georges Clouzot

Henri-Georges Clouzot Biography

Henri-Georges Clouzot was known as one of the best french film directors. He was born in France, on August 18th 1907, to a father who owned a book store, he was the eldest of three siblings. When he turned 18 he went to Paris in order to study political science.

His talent of writing introduced him as a playwright, for cinemas and theatres. By luck he met Adolphe Ossa who hired him, and sent him straight to Berlin where he worked in a studio Babelsberg, to translate scrips of foreign films. Later he was fired from the German studio - as he was friends with Jewish producers.

He returned to France and was tragically diagnosed with tuberculosis.While he was recovering he found work as a screenwriter for the company of continental films. His film Le Courbeau drew dispute and he was banned by the french government from making films until 1947. When the ban was lifted he made successfull thriller films (with different sub-genres) such as The Murder Lives at Number 21 (1942), Les Diaboliques (1954) and Les Espions (1957).

The Murder Lives at Number 21 is a comedy thriller, it is about an inspector who has been assigned to a case, he is on the hunt to find a murderer called 'Monsieur Durand' who leaves calling cards on his victims. The inspector is accompanied by his mistress, 'Mila Malou - a struggling ambitious actress who attempts to help him, in order to get noticed in the film industry.

Les Diaboliques is a film about a wife and her husband who is a headteacher, and his mistress, who plan to kill him, when they kill him they dump the body in their school's neglected pool. They expect his corpse to float to the surface so everyone would think it was an accident. However it fails to float to the surface, and when the pool is drained the corpse is nowhere to be seen. Mysteriously the headteachers image appears in the school photo. Shortly after many unusual incidents occur.

Les Espions is a thriller about a doctor who works in a bad conditioned psychiatric hospital, he is offered a great amount of money to take in a new patient. Soon the hospital is full of 'apparent' secret agents who are trying to find out who the patient is.