Eugène Lourié

Eugène Lourié , Russian Евгений Лурье / Yevgeny Lurje , (born March 26, ^jul. / 8. April  1903 ^greg. In Kharkov , Russian Empire ; † 26. May 1991 in Woodland Hills , California , USA ) was a Russian-born art director , director and Production designer for French and US cinema.

Life

As a result of the turmoil of the civil war in the Soviet Union, Lourié fled to France via Istanbul in 1921 . There he received his practical training with a ballet ('Ballet suèdois') and still worked in the silent film era as an outfitter (e.g. 1925/26 with Abel Gances Napoleon ) and costume designer (e.g. 1929 with Richard Oswalds Cagliostro ) to the cinema.

At the beginning of the 1930s, Lourié began his work as chief architect. Until the outbreak of the Second World War , he designed the decorations for some important works of poetic realism and for outstanding literary adaptations, including films by Marcel L'Herbier and Max Ophüls as well as several masterpieces by Jean Renoir ( Night Asylum , The Great Illusion , Beast Man , The Rules of the Game ), with which he was able to create both upper-class, apocalyptic mood and petty-bourgeois dreariness.

After the occupation of France by the German Wehrmacht , Lourié and Renoir moved to the USA, where both successfully continued their cooperation. However, while Renoir returned to his old homeland via India in the early 1950s , Lourié stayed in the United States. In 1952, shortly after completing his work for Charlie Chaplin's limelight , he was given the opportunity to direct a film for the first time. His debut Panik in New York was a moderately suspenseful animal horror film about a prehistoric dinosaur that was thawed in the Arctic and attacked the largest city in the USA. The finale at the fairground of Coney Island is one of the highlights of this production (often copied in variations).

The success of Panik in New York , which was based primarily on the remarkable Rhedosaurus creation by fantasy figure tinkerer Ray Harryhausen , set in motion a worldwide wave of films about prehistoric monsters , especially popular in Japan due to the subsequent Godzilla films. Lourié then received further offers in England in the late 1950s to work as a director in the horror film genre.

In the early 1960s he returned to film architecture, and since the early 1970s he has mainly designed the sets for American television productions, including the popular series Kung Fu . In 1970, he and Alex Weldon were nominated for the Oscar for best visual effects in the adventure story Krakatoa - The Greatest Adventure of the Last Century . After building the films for Clint Eastwood's action comedy Bronco Billy , Lourié largely withdrew from the film business. Almost 80 years old, Eugène Lourié made an appearance in Richard Gere's crime thriller Breathless . In 1985 his autobiography was published under the title My Work in Films .

Filmography

As a production designer for movies

• 1931: Un coup de téléphone
• 1933: Madame Bovary
• 1934: Le bossu
• 1934: Jeanne
• 1935: Baccarat
• 1935: Crime et châtiment
• 1935: Black eyes (Les yeux noirs)
• 1936: Night asylum (Les Bas-fonds)
• 1936: Le grand refrain
• 1936: Aventure à Paris
• 1937: Jealousy (Nuits de feu)
• 1937: The great illusion (La grande illusion)
• 1937: Alibi (L'alibi)
• 1937: Ramuntcho
• 1937: Rasputin (La tragédie impériale)
• 1938: Beast Man (La Bête Humaine)
• 1938: Le Roman de Werther
• 1939: The rules of the game (La règle du jeu)
• 1939: Without a Tomorrow (Sans lendemain)
• 1939: L'or du Cristobal
• 1940: Fausse alert
• 1942: This Land is Mine (production manager only)
• 1943: Three Russian Girls
• 1943: Sahara
• 1943: The Imposter
• 1944: In Society
• 1944: The Man from the South (The Southerner)
• 1944: The House of Fear
• 1945: Uncle Harry's Strange Affair (The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry)
• 1946: Diary of a Chambermaid (The Diary of a Chambermaid)
• 1946: Song of the Orient (Song of Scheherazade)
• 1947: The Long Night
• 1947: Torment of Love (A Woman's Vengeance)
• 1950: The New Orleans Tavern (The Adventures of Captain Fabian)
• 1951: The Power (The River)
• 1952: spotlight (Limelight)
• 1953: The Blue Stone of the Maharajah (The Diamond Queen)
• 1954: Three Sailors in Paris (So ​​This is Paris)
• 1961: Confessions of an Opium Eater
• 1962: We are waiting in Ashiya (Flight From Ashiya)
• 1963: Shock Corridor
• 1963: The Naked Kiss
• 1964: Crack in the World (Crack in the World)
• 1965: The Final Battle (Battle of the Bulge)
• 1966: A Day to Fight (Custer of the West)
• 1967: Bikini Paradise
• 1967: Krakatoa - The Greatest Adventure of the Last Century (Krakatoa, East of Java) (WP: 1969)
• 1968: The Fall of the Sun (The Royal Hunt of the Sun)
• 1970: What's the matter with Helen? (What's the Matter With Helen?)
• 1971: Death Takes a Holiday (TV)
• 1972: The Eyes of Charles Sand (TV)
• 1972: Haunts of the Very Rich (TV)
• 1973: Carola (TV)
• 1972–75: Kung Fu (TV series)
• 1976: Time Travelers (TV)
• 1976: Country House of Dead Souls (Burnt Offerings)
• 1976: An Enemy of the People (Premiere: 1978)
• 1977: Adventure in Atlantis (The Amazing Captain Nemo) (TV)
• 1978: Lacey and the Mississippi Queen (TV)
• 1979: Bronco Billy
• 1982: Breathless ( actors only)

Films (as a director)

• 1952: Panic in New York
• 1955: Foreign Intrigue (TV series, eight episodes)
• 1957: The Colossus of New York (The Colossus of New York)
• 1958: The Loch Ness Monster (Behemoth the Sea Monster)
• 1959: Gorgon (premiere: 1961)

literature

• Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 5: L - N. Rudolf Lettinger - Lloyd Nolan. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 109 ff.

Web links

• Eugène Lourié in the Internet Movie Database (English)