Claude Berri

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Claude Berri (born July 1, 1934 in Paris ; † January 12, 2009 there ; actually Claude Berel Langmann ) was a French film director , actor , film producer and screenwriter . Berri was one of the most versatile and successful film directors and producers in France. His influence in the French film industry was so significant and varied that he was the godfather (“le parrain”), the ruler (“l'empereur”), the pillar (“le pilier”) and the head of the family (“le chef de famille ”) of French cinema.

life and work

Berri came from a Jewish furrier family who immigrated from Eastern Europe in a Parisian workers' quarter in the 10th arrondissement . His father Hirsch Langmann was a communist and came from Poland, his mother Beila, nee. Bercu, was a worker from Romania. He filmed his childhood and youth in 1970 in the autobiographical feature film Papas Kino ( Le cinéma de papa ) and a little more freely in the comedy The Little French Women - The First Time (1976).

At first he worked with his father, at the same time he began acting in the theater and played in the films with Jacques Becker ( Rue de l'Estrapade , 1952) and Jean Renoir ( French Cancan , 1955). He then turned to directing in the 1960s. His first film, the short film Le poulet (1962), won an Oscar . In 1967 he founded the production company Renn Productions , which he named after his fellow actor Katharina Renn. In The Old Man and the Child (1967) he describes his deportation to the unoccupied zone in Montauban during the German occupation in 1941 . As a supposedly Catholic child, he was placed with an old couple. The old man turned out to be an anti-Semite and a Pétain supporter, but developed increasingly sympathy for the boy entrusted to him. For this role he was able to win the character actor Michel Simon . François Truffaut considered this feature film to be the first true film about the time of the occupation and named Berri a new Jean Renoir.

Berri was one of the most versatile producers and directors in French film of the twentieth century. His spectrum encompassed many different film genres such as teenage comedies ( The Little French Women , 1976 and All Beginnings are Fun , 1977), literary adaptations ( Marcel Pagnol's novel Die Wasser der Hügel , Zola's miners novel Germinal ) or comedies such as the Viagra comedy La Débandade (1999) and Willkommen bei den Sch'tis (2008), his last and biggest popular success with 20 million viewers. In the socially critical crime film On the Edge of the Night ( Tchao Pantin  ), he led the 1968 activist Coluche , who until then had only played humorous roles, to his greatest success. He received the César in 1984 for the best portrayal of a leading male role for his role as a lonely tank attendant . His thanks during the award ceremony (“Je voudrais remercier Claude Berri” / “I would like to thank Claude Berri”) should become an often-quoted and ridiculed expression during the next few years at the César Galas.

Berri did not see himself as a film avant-garde, but as the creator of sophisticated or at least intelligently made entertainment films. He was given a feeling for popular film subjects and a pronounced good taste. This enabled Berri to win over film critics as well as the general public for his films. As a leftist artist, his preferred milieu when choosing the material for the film was the proletariat and the life of the "common people". By the editors of the film magazine Cahiers du Cinema , however, he was criticized as a representative of the "cinema de qualité" and never accepted. However, this did not prevent him from participating in the production of films by former editors such as André Téchiné , Jacques Rivette ( Va Savoir , 2001) and Éric Rohmer ( Meine Nacht bei Maud , 1969). He has sometimes been described as impulsive, bossy, and driven, but he has also worked successfully with star actors. When filming the biography (1997) of the resistance fighter Lucie Aubrac , which was very important to him, he did not accept the views of the leading actress Juliette Binoche and dismissed her after heated discussions.

He has also produced successful projects for other famous directors such as Roman Polański ( Tess ), Volker Schlöndorff ( The Fiend ), Miloš Forman ( Valmont ), Patrice Chéreau ( The Bartholomew Night ) and Costa-Gavras ( The Deputy ). He had a difficult and complicated relationship with the director and actor Maurice Pialat . His sister Arlette was married to Pialat, who used Berri's family history and collaboration for some of his films. In 2001 he merged his production company Renn Productions with Pathé to form Pathé Renn Productions , after his death in 2009 the company was renamed Pathé Films .

The Modern Art was another creative profession that interested him. He collected contemporary art from Robert Ryman , Richard Serra , Bruce Nauman , Dan Flavin and Paul McCarthy . In 2008 he had an art center with a gallery designed by the architect Jean Nouvel , the “Espace Berri” , in the Marais district of Paris .

In 1988 he founded the Association des auteurs, réalisateurs, producteurs (ARP) in order to better assert the interests of French filmmakers against the US hegemony in the GATT negotiations. From September 2003 to June 2007, Claude Berri was President of the Cinémathèque française . During this time he promoted the move of the Cinémathèque to the former American Center in Bercy .

In his autobiography he regretted the change of his surname from Langmann to his slightly changed middle name Berel. His return to his Jewish roots began when he began writing his autobiography in 1983, and he deepened it in discussions with psychiatrists and analysts during two life crises. Berri, who suffered a stroke in 2006, died on January 12, 2009 in the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris as a result of a cerebral haemorrhage. He was married to the Lebanese actress Anne-Marie Rassam from 1965 to 1980 and was the father of the actor and film producer Thomas Langmann (* 1972) and the film actor Julien Rassam (* 1968), who was paralyzed after a fall from a window and died in 2002. He had his third son Darius Berri (* 1987) with the costume designer Sylvie Gautrelet . The writer and film producer Nathalie Rheims, a sister of the photographer Bettina Rheims , had been his partner since 1998. Berri was buried on January 15, 2009 in the municipality of Bagneux in the Hauts-de-Seine department in the presence of 800 people, including numerous celebrities from culture and politics.

Filmography

Director

  • 1962: Le poulet (+ producer)
  • 1964: Les baisers (director of the episode Baiser de 16 ans )
  • 1964: Weird charm and great opportunities (La chance) (Director and screenplay of the 1st episode)
  • 1967: The old man and the child (Le vieil homme et l'enfant) (+ screenwriter)
  • 1969: The Wedding (Mazel Tov ou Le mariage) (+ screenwriter, actor, producer)
  • 1970: Le pistonné (+ screenwriter, producer)
  • 1970: Papas Kino ( Le cinéma de papa ) (+ screenwriter, actor)
  • 1972: Sex-Shop (+ screenwriter, actor)
  • 1975: Le mâle du siècle (+ screenwriter, actor, producer)
  • 1976: The Little French Women - The First Time (La première fois) (+ screenwriter)
  • 1977: Every beginning is fun (Un moment d'égarement) (+ screenwriter)
  • 1980: The Men I Loved (Je vous aime) (+ screenwriter)
  • 1981: Le maître d'école (+ screenwriter)
  • 1983: On the Edge of Night (Tchao Pantin) (+ screenwriter)
  • 1986: Jean de Florette (Jean Florette) - based on a novel by Marcel Pagnol
  • 1986: Manon's Rache (Manon des sources) - based on a novel by Marcel Pagnol
  • 1990: Uranus (+ screenwriter) - based on a novel by Marcel Aymé
  • 1993: Germinal (+ screenwriter, producer) - based on the novel by Émile Zola
  • 1997: Lucie Aubrac (+ screenwriter)
  • 1999: La débandade (+ screenwriter) (+ actor, under his real name Claude Langmann )
  • 2001: Laura stirs up dust (Une femme de ménage) (+ screenwriter, producer)
  • 2007: Together you are less alone (ensemble, c'est tout) (+ screenwriter, producer) - based on the novel by Anna Gavalda
  • 2009: The Little House Tyrant (Trésor) (+ screenwriter, producer)

Script or adaptation

  • 1961: Janine, by Maurice Pialat (screenwriter, dialogues + actor)
  • 1972: L'œuf (Adaptateur)
  • 1984: Blame It on Rio (Blame it on Rio) - Director: Stanley Donen ; Original was Berri's screenplay for Every beginning is fun
  • 1985: Le fou de guerre (French adaptation + producer)

Documentaries

actor

producer

literature

  • Claude Berri: Autoportrait. Scheer, Paris 2003, 362 pages, ISBN 2-914172-68-0 , autobiography, review:
  • Claude Berri: Le vieil homme et l'enfant. J. Martineau, Paris 1967, 200 pp.
  • Nathalie Rheims: Claude. Éditions Léo Scheer, Paris 2009, 124 pp., ISBN 978-2-7561-0210-8 , review by Le Point .

Web links

Pictures and videos

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jean-Luc Douin: Nécrologie. Claude Berri, homme-clé du cinéma français. In: Le Monde , January 13, 2009.
  2. ↑ a b Gérard Lefort and Didier Péron: Berri, mort d'un baron du cinéma . In: Liberation , January 13, 2009.
  3. ↑ Papa's cinema. In: arte , September 14, 2015.
  4. ↑ The Little French Women - The First Time. In: TVspielfilm.de
  5. ^ Gerhard Midding: Claude Berri, producer (1934–2009) . In: Die Welt , January 13, 2009.
  6. ↑ Cover picture: Tchao Berri. In: Liberation , January 13, 2009 and small picture .
  7. ^ Je voudrais remercier Claude Berri . In: La Voix du Nord , ( Lille ), January 13, 2009.
  8. ↑ a b Bruce Weber: Claude Berri, French Filmmaker of Sweep and Charm, Dies at 74 . In: The New York Times , January 13, 2009.
  9. ^ Fritz Göttler: The Janus-headed and his "Sch'tis".  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.sueddeutsche.de   In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 12, 2009.
  10. ↑ Pathé Films on cineuropa.org , 2015, (English).
  11. ^ Gerhard Midding: Change of power in the Parisian Cinémathèque . In: Die Welt , June 21, 2007.
  12. ↑ Jérôme Segal: From Claude Langmann to Claude Berri ... and back! . (PDF; 119 kB, p. 1)
  13. ↑ Claude Berri on hollywood.com
  14. ↑ C'était un homme d'exception ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Voici , January 14th, 2009 and Photo: Nathalie Rheims and Claude Berri on purepeople.com , 2009.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.voici.fr
  15. ↑ Photos: Le monde du cinéma rend hommage au producteur Claude Berri. In: 20min.ch , January 15, 2009,
      photos: Tchao Berri. ( Memento of January 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Le Point .
  16. ↑ Jérôme Segal's review of Berri's autobiography: From Claude Langmann to Claude Berri ... and back! (PDF; 119 kB), 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Berri, Claude
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Langmann, Claude Berel (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French film director, actor, film producer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 2009
Place of death Paris