Co-founder of the Cinémathèque française with Henri Langlois, and later a director of unsettling lyricism — the slaughterhouse documentary Le Sang des bêtes and the horror classic Les Yeux sans visage.
Georges Franju co-founded the Cinémathèque française, the archive that saved a large part of French film history, and then spent thirty years directing films of his own. He was born at Fougères in Brittany on 12 April 1912 and died in Paris on 5 November 1987.
In 1936, aged twenty-four, he and Henri Langlois set up the Cinémathèque in order to collect and show prints that nobody else was keeping. It became the institution where the New Wave directors learned what cinema was.[1]
His own films are short documentaries and a small number of features, and they share one method: filming real and often unbearable things calmly, and refusing to tell the audience how to feel about them. Blood of the Beasts, made in 1949 inside the Paris slaughterhouses, is the best known.
Eyes Without a Face, in 1960, is a horror film about a surgeon abducting young women to graft their faces onto his disfigured daughter. It was attacked on release and is now one of the most influential horror films ever made.[2]
Georges Franju was born at Fougères, in Brittany, on 12 April 1912, one of twin brothers; his brother Jacques worked with him later. The family was not well off and the boys' education was brief.[3]
He trained as a packaging manufacturer, then did military service in Algeria. Back in Paris he worked as a set designer for the Folies Bergère and the Casino de Paris, which is where he learned to build an image.[4]
He met Henri Langlois in the mid-1930s through his own twin brother Jacques. In 1934 the two of them made a short film together, Le Métro. Neither had any training.[5]
The following year they started a film club, the Cercle du cinéma, on five hundred francs borrowed from Langlois's parents.[5]
In 1936 Franju and Langlois founded the Cinémathèque française, together with Jean Mitry and Paul-Auguste Harlé, who put up the money. The purpose was simple and at the time eccentric: to collect film prints, which distributors routinely destroyed once a title stopped earning, and to show them.[1]
Films were made of nitrate stock, which decayed, caught fire and was often melted down for its silver. Almost nobody regarded them as worth keeping. The Cinémathèque's collection, hidden and dispersed during the German occupation, preserved thousands of prints that would otherwise not exist.[5]
In the early years Franju ran most of the administration while Langlois collected. He also served as secretary-general of the International Federation of Film Archives, founded in 1938, which extended the same practice to other countries, and he returned to preside over the Cinémathèque again after he stopped making films.[1]
The Cinémathèque's screening room later became the education of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, who watched everything there before they made anything. Franju handed the day-to-day running to Langlois at the end of the 1940s and turned to directing.[5]
Franju's first film as a director on his own was Blood of the Beasts, made in 1949. It is twenty minutes long and it was shot in the slaughterhouses of La Villette and Vaugirard on the edge of Paris.[2]
The film alternates two things. There are quiet shots of the suburbs around the slaughterhouses: children, a canal, a flea market, couples. Then there is the killing floor, filmed in full. A horse is shot with a captive bolt, a calf is bled, and sheep go down a line while a workman whistles.[4]
The commentary, spoken in a calm, level voice, gives statistics and describes the work as work. Franju does not editorialise and does not look away, and the horror comes entirely from the ordinariness of what is being shown.
Franju made about a dozen short documentaries between 1949 and 1958, most of them commissioned, and most of them turned into something the commissioners had not expected.[2]
Hôtel des Invalides was made in 1951 for an organisation that wanted a film about the French army museum. What Franju delivered is a tour of the building that turns into an argument against war. The guide's proud commentary runs over cases of weapons while the camera keeps finding the disabled veterans who still live there.[4]
Le Grand Méliès, in 1952, is about the film pioneer Georges Méliès, with Méliès's son playing him. It was a subject Franju had a claim on: the Cinémathèque had helped rescue Méliès's props and sets from destruction. Others took on the Palais de Justice, a church, a science museum and the Paris of Eugène Atget. In each case Franju filmed an institution straight and let what it actually contains do the work.[4]
Franju's first feature was The Keepers, released in 1959, set inside a psychiatric hospital and adapted from a novel by Hervé Bazin. It carried over the documentary manner of the short films: the institution is filmed as it is, and the horror comes from the ordinary administration of it.[2]
Eyes Without a Face followed in 1960. A famous surgeon, responsible for the car crash that destroyed his daughter's face, keeps her hidden in his house behind a white mask while his assistant abducts young women whose faces he can attempt to graft onto hers.[2]
The surgery is shown. Franju filmed the operation in a long, unhurried sequence with the manner of a medical documentary, which is what caused the trouble: people fainted at the Edinburgh festival, and the film was cut in Britain and dismissed in France.
Franju's own account of the film was flat and practical. He said he had wanted to make an anguished film with a quiet manner, and he refused to call it a horror picture at all.[4]
Its reputation rose steadily afterwards. The mask, the calm surgical horror and the daughter's final walk out of the house have been quoted for sixty years, in films from Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In to the Halloween series. It is now standard on lists of the best horror ever made.
In 1963 Franju remade Judex, the 1916 serial by Louis Feuillade about a caped avenger who punishes a corrupt banker. The script was written with Jacques Champreux, Feuillade's grandson. Franju made no attempt to modernise it; he filmed it as a slow, elegant dream, and the best-known sequence is a costume ball at which the guests wear birds' heads.[2]
Thomas the Impostor, in 1965, from Jean Cocteau's novel, is set in the First World War. Franju went on working into the 1970s, largely for television, including a long serial version of a Feuillade-style crime story, Nuits rouges, again with Jacques Champreux.
He directed little after that. He died in Paris on 5 November 1987, aged seventy-five.[3]
Franju's first claim is the archive. The Cinémathèque française is the reason a great deal of early cinema still exists, and it is where the directors of the New Wave were educated. Without the collection he and Henri Langlois began in 1936, the history those directors rewrote would have been largely unavailable to them.
The second claim is the method. Franju filmed appalling things in a flat, careful, unemphatic way, and refused to tell the audience how to feel about them. Blood of the Beasts is still shown to student filmmakers as the demonstration of what restraint does. Eyes Without a Face applied the same coolness to fiction, which is why it frightened people who had sat through much gorier films unmoved.
Born at Fougères in Brittany on 12 April, one of twin brothers.
Trains as a packaging manufacturer, his formal education having been brief.
Does military service in Algeria.
Returns to Paris and works as a set designer for the Folies Bergère and the Casino de Paris.
Makes his first short film, Le Métro, with Henri Langlois, whom he had met at a film club.
Founds a film club, the Cercle du cinéma, with Langlois.
Co-founds the Cinémathèque française with Henri Langlois, Jean Mitry and Paul-Auguste Harlé.
Becomes secretary-general of the newly founded International Federation of Film Archives.
The Cinémathèque's collection is hidden and dispersed during the German occupation, preserving thousands of prints.
Works for the French film industry's trade institute after the war.
Directs Blood of the Beasts, twenty minutes shot in the slaughterhouses of La Villette and Vaugirard.
Directs Hôtel des Invalides, commissioned as a film about the army museum and delivered as an argument against war.
Directs Le Grand Méliès, about the film pioneer Georges Méliès, with Méliès's son playing him.
Directs Monsieur et Madame Curie.
Directs Les Poussières, on industrial dust and the diseases it causes.
Directs Sur le pont d'Avignon and Mon chien, the second an attack on people who abandon their dogs.
Directs Notre-Dame, cathédrale de Paris.
Directs La Première Nuit, a short about a boy who spends a night alone in the Métro.
Directs his first feature, The Keepers, set in a psychiatric hospital.
Directs Eyes Without a Face, in which a surgeon abducts young women to graft their faces onto his disfigured daughter.
Audiences faint at the Edinburgh festival screening of Eyes Without a Face. It is cut in Britain and dismissed in France.
Directs Spotlight on a Murderer, a mystery set in a château.
Directs Thérèse Desqueyroux, from the François Mauriac novel.
Remakes Louis Feuillade's 1916 serial Judex, from a script written with Feuillade's grandson Jacques Champreux.
Directs Thomas the Impostor, from Jean Cocteau's First World War novel.
Directs La Faute de l'abbé Mouret, from Émile Zola.
Directs the television serial Nuits rouges, again with Jacques Champreux, in the manner of Feuillade's crime serials.
Directs Le Dernier Mélodrame, one of his last works.
Retires from directing.
Eyes Without a Face is revived in cinemas and its reputation as a landmark of horror is established.
Dies in Paris on 5 November, aged seventy-five.
The Criterion Collection issues Eyes Without a Face with Blood of the Beasts, bringing both to a new audience.
Collaborated with · 1935
Franju and Langlois met in the mid-1930s, ran the film club Le Cercle du cinéma together on money borrowed from Langlois's parents, directed the short Le Métro, and in 1936 founded the Cinémathèque française.
Founded · 1936
The friend Langlois started the film society with in the mid-1930s; FIAF dates the founding of the archive it became to 1936.
A French film director and archivist, born at Fougères in 1912 and died in Paris in 1987. In 1936 he co-founded the Cinémathèque française with Henri Langlois, and from 1949 he directed documentaries and features of his own, including Blood of the Beasts and Eyes Without a Face.
The French national film archive, founded in 1936 by Franju, Henri Langlois, Jean Mitry and Paul-Auguste Harlé to collect and show prints that distributors were routinely destroying. Its collection preserved thousands of films that would not otherwise exist, and its screening room is where Godard, Truffaut, Rivette, Rohmer and Chabrol learned cinema.
A twenty-minute documentary Franju made in 1949 inside the Paris slaughterhouses. It cuts between quiet shots of the surrounding suburbs and the killing floor, filmed in full, with a calm commentary that gives statistics and describes the work as work. It is still shown to student filmmakers as a demonstration of what restraint does.
Because it filmed horror calmly. A surgeon abducts young women to graft their faces onto his disfigured daughter, and Franju shot the operation in a long unhurried sequence with the manner of a medical documentary. Audiences fainted in 1960 and critics dismissed it; it is now standard on lists of the best horror films made, and has been quoted from Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In to the Halloween series.
Not directly, but the archive he co-founded educated them. Godard, Truffaut, Rivette, Rohmer and Chabrol watched everything at the Cinémathèque before they made anything. Franju was a generation older and left the running of the archive to Langlois once he began directing.
Franju remade Feuillade's 1916 serial Judex in 1963, about a caped avenger who punishes a corrupt banker, from a script written with Feuillade's grandson Jacques Champreux. He made no attempt to modernise it. He worked with Champreux again on the television serial Nuits rouges in 1974.
Founded · 1936
The friend Langlois started the film society with in the mid-1930s; FIAF dates the founding of the archive it became to 1936.
Collaborated with · 1935
Franju and Langlois met in the mid-1930s, ran the film club Le Cercle du cinéma together on money borrowed from Langlois's parents, directed the short Le Métro, and in 1936 founded the Cinémathèque française.
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Reference article cross-checked for the dates, the founding of the Cinémathèque and the filmography.
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