Jean Grémillon

March 4, 1898 — Bayeux, Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France

Jean Grémillon was a French film director. After directing a number of documentaries during the 1920s, many now lost, Grémillon had his first substantial success with the dramatic feature Maldone in 1928. Over the next quarter-century, he directed twenty more feature films, of which he is best known for five made between 1937 and 1944: Gueule d'amour (1937), L'Étrange M. Victor (1938), Remorques (1941), Lumière d'été (1943), and Le Ciel est à vous (1944), all but the first starring Madeleine Renaud. Grémillon rejected what he referred to as "mechanical naturalism" in favor of "the discovery of that subtlety which the human eye does not perceive directly but which must be shown by establishing the harmonies, the unknown relations, between objects and beings; it is a vivifying, inexhaustible source of images that strike our imaginations and enchant our hearts." He died on November 25, 1959 in Paris, France.