Georges Franju Biography

A figure of immense importance in the history of French cinema, not primarily for his films (exceptional though many of these are) but for being the co-founder, with Henri Langlois of the Cinematheque Française in 1937 - France's most famous and important film archive. He worked primarily as a film archivist until 1949, when he made his solo directorial debut with the shocking yet lyrical slaughterhouse documentary 'Le sang des betes'. More documentary shorts followed before his feature debut, 'La Tete contre les murs' in 1958, which established his uniquely poetic and visually striking style (his films were generally characterised by unforgettable images that owed a great deal to early cinema in general and German Expressionism in particular). His reputation was strengthened with the bizarre plastic surgery horror film 'Les Yeux sans visage' in 1960, 'Judex', the tribute to French film serial pioneer Louis Feuillade in 1963, and the Cocteau adaptation 'Thomas l'imposteur' in 1964, though in the last fifteen years of his life he was sadly neglected.