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Writers:Jacques Prévert (ballet "Le rendez-vous")
Jacques Prévert (scenario and dialogue)

Release Date:15 March 1950 (USA) more
Genre:Drama | Fantasy | Mystery | Romance more

Mentre Parigi dorme – Italy,

Nattens portar – Sweden,

Pforten der Nacht - West Germany,

Les Portes de la nit - Spain (Catalan title),

Y?n portit – Finland

Marcel Carne (August 18, 1906 - October 31, 1996) was a French film director.

Born in Paris, France, he began his career in silent film as a trainee with director Jacques Feyder. By age 25, Carne had already directed his first film, one that marked the beginning of a successful collaboration with surrealist poet and screenwriter Jacques Pr茅vert. This collaborative relationship lasted for more than a dozen years, during which they created films that defined French cinema of the day. Together, they were responsible for developing poetic realism.

Under the German occupation of France during World War II, Carneworked in the Vichy zone where he subverted the regime's attempts to control art and filmed his masterpiece Les Enfants du paradis (Children of Pardise). In the late 1990s, the film was voted "Best French Film of the Century" in a poll of 600 French critics and professionals. Post war, he and Prevert followed this triumph with what at the time was the most expensive production ever undertaken in the history of French film. But the result, titled Les Portes de la nuit, was panned by the critics and a box office failure that ended the duo's working relationship.

Through the 1950s, the war-weary French moviegoing public wanted feel-good comedy and romance films, not the stark realities Carne continued to offer. By the end of the decade, with the New Wave era now underway, other than his 1958 hit Les Tricheurs, Marcel Carne's postwar films met with only uneven success and many were greeted by an almost unrelenting negative criticism from the press and within members of the film industry. Carn茅 made his last film in 1976.

Carne was gay and made little secret about it, though he did not flaunt it either. Several of his later films contain references to male homosexuality or bisexuality. His one-time partner was Roland Lesaffre who appeared in many of his films.

In 1989 a book was published by Edward Baron Turk as part of the Harvard Film Studies that told his story under the title Child of Paradise: Marcel Carn茅 and the Golden Age of French Cinema.

Marcel Carne died in 1996 in Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine, and was buried in the Cimetiere Saint-Vincent in Montmartre.

• Jenny (1936)
• Drole de drame (1936)
• Le Quai des brumes (1938)
• H么tel du Nord (1938)
• Le Jour se leve (1939)
• Les Visiteurs du soir (1942)
• Les Enfants du paradis (1945)
• Les Portes de la nuit (1946)
• La Marie du port (1949)
• Juliette ou La clef des songes (1951)
• Therese Raquin (1953)
• L'Air de Paris (1954)
• Les Tricheurs (1958)
• Terrain vague (1960)
• Trois chambres a Manhattan (1965)
• Les Jeunes loups (1968)
• Les Assassins de l'ordre (1971)
• La Merveilleuse visite (1973)
• La Bible (1976)

(From IMDB)Biography for Joseph Kosma

Date of Birth 12 October 1905, Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary)

Date of Death 7 August 1969, La Roche-Guyon, France

Birth Name Jozsef Kozma

Mini Biography
Joseph Kosma was born in Budapest. He took an interest in music at a very young age, writing an opera called "Noel dans les Tranchées" as a teenager. One of his greatest loves in Budapest was the music of Bela Bartok. Finding the political atmosphere to be more and more oppressive in Budapest, Kosma moved to Berlin where he joined Bertolt Brecht's traveling theater troupe (Kosma was a friend of a friend of Brecht's wife). Once fascism was clearly on the rise in Berlin, Kosma headed for Paris, without knowing a word of French.

In Paris, Kosma eventually met Jacques Prévert. The pair went on to create around 80 songs, with Kosma setting Prévert's poems to music (and in a few instances, the other way around). Prévert introduced Kosma to Renoir (Prévert had written Crime de Monsieur Lange, Le (1936)), and one of Kosma's songs ended up in the film. Next, Kosma wrote the score for _Une partie de campagne (1936)_), which was not released until after the Second World War.

Kosma then met Marcel Carné through Prévert. Kosma went on to work for Carné through the Occupation - while hiding in the South of France, because he was a Jew. While in hiding, Kosma ended up writing uncredited scores for Visiteurs du soir, Les (1942)) and Enfants du paradis, Les (1945))- though Kosma actually ended up with his name in the credits for this latter film, because the fall of the Nazis was imminent as the film was nearing completion.

Kosma is perhaps most famous for his song "Feuilles Mortes" ("Autumn Leaves"), which has been covered by many jazz musicians in many different countries. The piece was originally written for an opera called "Le Rendez-vous", which Prévert and Kosma then convinced Carné to turn into a film. The film changed its name to Portes de la nuit, Les (1946), after a Prévert lyric from another song, to avoid confusion with another film that had recently been released. The film was the most costly film to date in the French film industry (Les Enfants du Paradis had been before this), but failed at the box office, though critics praised the music.

In the postwar years, Kosma wrote numerous notable scores, particularly the score for the haunting and disturbing film, Sang des bêtes, Le (1949). Kosma continued to work on film scores until his death, though in his last years he focused on his first love, music for theater, composing the operas "Les Hussards" and "Les Canuts". The Kosma/Carné/Prévert team gradually drifted apart, and Kosma remarks in his journals that his two old friends did not come to one of his opera premieres. Kosma continued to work for Renoir until the very end, however, composing the music for later works. IMDb Mini Biography By: David Zax

(From wiki) Joseph Kosma (October 22, 1905 - August 7, 1969) was a Hungarian-French composer, of Jewish background.

Kosma was born J贸zsef Kozma in Budapest, where his parents taught stenography and typing. He had a brother, Akos. A maternal relative was the photographer L谩szl贸 Moholy-Nagy, and another relative was the conductor Georg Solti. He started to play the piano at age 5, and later took piano lessons. At the age of 11, he wrote his first opera, Christmas in the Trenches. After completing his education at the Gymnasium Franz-Josef, he attended the Academy of Music in Budapest, where he studied with Leo Weiner. He also studied with B茅la Bart贸k at the Liszt Academy. He earned diplomas in composition and conducting. He won a grant to study in Berlin in 1928. There, he met Lilli Apel, another musician, whom he later married. Kosma also met and studied with Hanns Eisler in Berlin. He also became acquainted with Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel.

Kosma and his wife emigrated to Paris in 1933. Eventually, he met Jacques Pr茅vert, who introduced him to Jean Renoir. During World War II and the Occupation of France, Kosma was placed under house arrest in the Alpes-Maritimes region, and was banned from composition. However, Pr茅vert managed to arrange for Kosma to contribute music for films, with other composers fronting for him. Among his credits are the scores to these classic French films: The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (telefilm, 1959), La Grande Illusion, Les Enfants du Paradis (1945), and The Rules of the Game (1939). He was also known for writing the standard classical-Jazz piece "Les feuilles mortes" "Autumn Leaves" (with French lyrics by Jacques Pr茅vert, and later English lyrics by Johnny Mercer), which was derived from music in Marcel Carn茅's film Les Portes de la Nuit (1946).

Kosma's mother and brother were killed by the Arrow Cross Nazi auxiliaries in 1944. Kosma himself was wounded in an explosion in August 1944 in France. Kosma's father survived the war, and died in 1957. Joseph Kosma died outside Paris in 1969 and was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery.

Early life

Montand was born Ivo Livi in Monsummano Terme, Italy to Josephine and Giovanni, poor peasants. Montand's family left Italy for France. He grew up in Marseille, where as a young man he worked in his sister's barber shop, and later on the docks. He began a career in show business as a music-hall singer. In 1944 he was discovered by edith Piaf in Paris and she made him part of her act, becoming his mentor and lover.

Career

He went on to international recognition as a singer and actor, starring in numerous films. His recognizably crooner songs, especially those about Paris, became instant classics.

In 1951 he married the actress Simone Signoret, and they co-starred in several films throughout their careers. The marriage was, by all accounts, fairly harmonious, lasting until her death in 1985, although Montand had a number of well-publicised affairs, notably with Marilyn Monroe, with whom he starred in one of her last films, Let's Make Love. During his career, Montand acted in a number of American motion pictures as well as on Broadway. He was nominated for a Cesar Award for "Best Actor" in 1980 for "I comme Icare" and again in 1984 for "Gar莽on!"

In the French dubbings of Looney Tunes, the character Pepe Le Pew is an Italian skunk named "P茅pe le putois". The voice characterization was often based on Montand's performances.

In 1986, after his international box-office draw power had fallen off considerably, the 65-year-old Montand gave one of his most memorable performances, as the scheming uncle in the two-part film: Jean de Florette, co-starring Gerard Depardieu, and Manon des Sources, co-starring Emmanuelle Beart. The film was a world-wide critical hit and raised Montand's profile in the U.S., where he made an appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman."

Personal life

Montand's only child, Valentin, his son by his second wife Carole Amiel, was born in 1988. In a paternity suit that rocked France, another woman accused Montand of being the father of her daughter and went to court to obtain a DNA sample from him. Montand refused, but the woman persisted after his death. In a court ruling that made international headlines, the woman won the right to have Montand exhumed and a sample taken. It subsequently showed that he was not the girl's father.

In his later years he maintained a home in St Paul de Vence, Provence until his death. He is buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France.

Montand died November 9, 1991 in France from a heart attack.[1]

In 2004, Catherine Allegret, Montand's stepdaughter and Signoret's daughter from her first marriage, published a book titled World Upside Down (Un monde 脿 l'envers ISBN 2-253-11442-1) in which she contended that Montand had abused her sexually since she was five years old.

Filmography

• Les portes de la nuit (1946)
• Le salaire de la peur (1953)
• Marguerite de la nuit (1955)
• Les Sorcieres de Salem (1956)
• La Grande Strada Azzurra (1957)
• Legge, La (1959)
• Let's Make Love (1960)
• Goodbye Again (1961)
• My Geisha (1962)
• Le Joli Mai de Chris Marker - Uniquement la narration (1963)
• Compartiment tueurs (1965)
• La guerre est finie (1966)
• Grand Prix (1966)
• Vivre pour vivre (1967)
• Le Diable par le Queue (1968) (The Devil by the Tail)
• Z (1969)
• On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)
• Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
• L'Aveu (1970)
• La folie des grandeurs (1971)
• Tout va bien (1972)
• Cesar et Rosalie (1972)
• etat de Sige (1973)
• Vincent, Francois, Paul...et les autres (1974)
• Le Sauvage (1975)
• Police Python 357 (1976)
• The Big Operator (1976)
• Le fond de l'air est rouge (1977)
• La Menace (1977)
• I as in Icarus (1979)
• Choix des Armes (1981)
• Garcon! (1983)
• Manon des Sources (1986)
• Jean de Florette (1986)
• IP5 (1991)