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Pierre Chenal

Pierre Chenal

Directing

Biography

Philippe Cohen, known as Pierre Chenal, is a French director, born December 5, 1904 in Brussels and died December 23, 1990 in La Garenne-Colombes. Chenal occupies an uncomfortable place in the history of French cinema: relatively unknown, he is cataloged as a filmmaker who left only a light body of work. His detailed filmography, however, tends to show the opposite. Made in the 1930s, his first short films were documentaries where the filmmaker used social realism. The Little Trades of Paris (1932) or A French City of Cinema had a didactic ambition which ranked him among the innovators at the time. Throughout his work, Pierre Chenal will maintain this taste for atmospheres tinged with truth where the social is shown. Hence his very marked penchant for adaptations of literary works by his contemporaries: he borrowed from Marcel Aymé the title of one of his first feature films, La rue sans nom (1933); summons Pirandello and The Man from Nowhere (1937); depicts The Mutineers of Elsinore by Jack London; and transforms James Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice to give The Last Turn. Pierre Chenal loves actors and casts the biggest ones. Louis Jouvet, Robert Le Vigan, Michel Simon, Pierre Blanchar, Viviane Romance and Albert Préjean praise his talent. In 1940, the filmmaker's career took a new turn when he retreated, during the war, to Argentina and Chile. He made a few minor films there, then returned to France with comic intentions expressed in Clochemerle (1947). In 1948, Chenal returned to Argentina and adapted Sangre Negra by the American noir novelist Richard Wright. Then, he developed a passion for thrillers and experimented with the genre on several occasions. But Raid on the City (1958), The Beast on the Prowl (1959) and The Assassin Knows the Music (1963) are not considered to be his best films.

Known For

L'assassin connaît la musique
7.8

Lionel Fribourg, a great composer (at least that's what he thinks) has a problem with his noisy environment: he can't complete his unfinished symphony. Of course there is a market for unfinished symphonies but, for all he knows, only one became famous. So he had better find a way to finish it. At long last, he comes across Agnès, a divorced woman who agrees to let him her quiet home. Lionel, full of hope, resumes work...

L'assassin connaît la musique

1963
Scandals of Clochemerle
6.2

A little town erupts in turmoil about the construction of a public urinal. The army is sent in to restore order, but the military add to the confusion by getting involved with the local women.

Scandals of Clochemerle

1948
Alibi
6.5

Paris, 1937. Winckler kills his enemy Gordon, a Chicago mobster, from the stage of a Parisian music hall, where he performs telepathy. He pays another artist, Helene, so that she tells the police they've spent the night together, which doesn't fool Callas, the police officer who investigates the murder. He hires one of his fellow officers in order to seduce Helene.

Alibi

1937
Missing Persons Section
6.6

The love affair of an ex-convict with a showgirl, unleashes the jealousy of his older, wealthy and unbalanced wife. A murder plot, staged phoney suicide and other twists and turns follow.

Missing Persons Section

1956
The Last Turning
6.5

Frank, a hobo, ends up in a garage-truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Nick Marino, its older, kind and naive owner, is married to Cora, a sexy and mercenary woman half his age. Frank, although not a fan of hard work, accepts Nick's offer to work for him. Of course, it is not for Nick's sake that the young man becomes his attendant, but for the love of Cora under whose spell he has fallen at once. It does not take long before Cora, who despises her husband, asks her lover to help her get rid of him. Frank is reluctant at first but ...

The Last Turning

1939
Versatile Lovers
3.6

Isabell runs a nursing home for wealthy women who are trying to detox from their various obsessions. Her lover, Serge Belaiev, a petty gangster, has pulled off a big hit but his partners have denounced him to the police in order to appropriate his share of the loot. Isabelle takes him in and hides him in an attic of this strange house. In love with Isabelle, Philippe Lansac, the owner of the place, decides to close the castle...

Versatile Lovers

1970
Devil and the Angel
6.0

The Director of an international banknote printing institute, mutilated by the face of the Great War, Frank Davres, falls in love with a young woman, Jeanne, admirably beautiful, but blind. He marries her. For her, he ruins himself and comes to issue counterfeit banknotes. The young woman does everything to make people forget her infirmity. One day, following an operation, she recovers her sight and notices the physical and moral ugliness of her husband. She hides her cure until the day when Frank, taken by the police, kills one of his accomplices and commits suicide. Jeanne leaves to join a friend with whom she was performing in a circus.

Devil and the Angel

1946
Native Son
5.5

In 1940s Chicago, a young black man takes a job as a chauffeur to a white family, which takes a turn for the worse when he accidentally kills the teenage daughter of the couple and then tries to cover it up.

Native Son

1951
Beast at Bay
4.8

Melun, on 1959. On the return to an auction, a young and attractive widow, Elisabeth Vernon, finds at her home(with her) a wounded escapee of prison. The fugitive, Daniel Morane, is a handsome boy and justifies himself crimes(murders) of which we accuse it. The young woman is allowed convince, seduce, feels sorry, and agrees to help him(it). But during their escape(mare), the doubt seizes her …

Beast at Bay

1959
Dangerous Games
6.0

Alain is the only son of a wealthy bourgeois couple. He takes violin lessons in Ménilmontant, where he is spotted by Fleur, a poor girl: she is going to kidnap him and demand a ransom from the young man's parents, money which will be used to pay for a good lawyer for her brother accused of killing a policeman.

Dangerous Games

1958
The Man from Nowhere
6.8

Mathias Pascal, saddled with a stupid wife and a nagging mother-in-law, leaves home and is extremely lucky at several gambling resorts. He returns home and discovers that a drowned man, fished out of the river, bears an uncanny likeness to him and is being buried by his family as him. This, to him, is a pleasant turn of events and he goes to Rome, where he falls in love with Louise Paleari. Count Papiano, a jealous suitor of Louise's, threatens him with arrest unless he produces credentials to prove his identity.

The Man from Nowhere

1937
Les mutinés de l'Elseneur
7.0

A journalist takes command of a ship after the crew mutiny against the brutal captain. It was an adaptation of the novel The Mutiny of the Elsinore by Jack London.

Les mutinés de l'Elseneur

1936
The Night They Killed Rasputin
5.0

Rasputin was a lusty steppes peasant, a god revealed, a cunning patriot, all that, or a mystifier? An intriguing biography.

The Night They Killed Rasputin

1960
Sirocco
5.9

Town trollop Safia, much against her better judgment, falls in love with Matteo, a beggar and mystic in the native quarter of Sirocco. She flees to France, first as the mistress and then wife of a wealthy archaeologist, and bears him Matteo's child, whom he believes to be his own. Complications arise years later when Matteo finds Safia, and a ring of blackmailers uncover her past and exposes her to her husband.

Sirocco

1938
The Idol
6.7

An actor argues with his wife and she decides to leave. The day after learning of the mysterious death of his wife in Viña del Mar, he hires a detective to find the murderer.

The Idol

1952
Crime and Punishment
7.0

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

Crime and Punishment

1935
Street Without a Name
10.0

The story focuses on a street in the Parisian banlieue where Italian and French workers live. Their neighborhood will soon be demolished and a mysterious character hides himself in this street.

Street Without a Name

1934
Sinners of Paris
5.5

Michel Piccoli plays a police inspector whose best friend is murdered on the orders of gang boss Charles Vanel. The inspector knows full well that Vanel is too crafty and well-connected to ever stand trial for his crime, so he carefully lays a subtle trap for his adversary. Unfortunately, both Piccoli and Vanel are thwarted by a pair of scheming females.

Sinners of Paris

1958
The Corpse Breaks a Date
5.3

On the night of his marriage, a young bourgeois man runs over a cyclist. He believes he is dead and hides the body. However, a mysterious character will later appear in his life.

The Corpse Breaks a Date

1944
The Lafarge Case
6.5

Based on true facts, a news item which was widely talked about in the nineteenth century, this is the story of a wife who might have poisoned her husband .

The Lafarge Case

1938