Жорж Франжю: Француз режиссерінің өмірі мен шығармашылығы

French filmmaker

Georges Franju (fʁɑ̃ʒy; 12 April 1912 – 5 November 1987) was a French filmmaker. He was born in Fougères, Ille et Vilaine.

Before working in French cinema, Franju held several different jobs. These included working for an insurance company and a noodle factory. He served briefly in the military in Algeria and was discharged in 1932. Upon his return, he studied to become a set designer and later created backdrops for music halls including Casino de Paris and the Folies Bergère. As well as creating the 16 mm short film Le Métro, Langlois and Franju also started a short lived film magazine and created a film club called Le Cercle du Cinema with 500 francs he borrowed from Langlois' parents. Franju ceased to be closely related with the Cinématheque Française as early as 1938, and only became associated with it strongly again in the 1980s when he was appointed as the honorary artistic director of the Cinématheque.

In 1949, Franju began work on a series of nine documentary films. The Nazi occupation of Paris and the industrialism following World War II influenced Franju's early works. His first documentary, The Blood of Beasts (French: Le Sang des Bêtes) was a graphic film of a day inside a Paris slaughterhouse. The second documentary, commissioned by the government in 1950, was Passing By the Lorraine (French: En Passant par la Lorraine). The film was commissioned as a celebration of the modernization of the French industry, but Franju's film showed his view of the ugliness spewing forth from monstrous factories. Franju's third film commissioned by the French government, Hôtel des Invalides (1951), was a look at life inside a veterans' hospital. The film was commissioned as a tribute to the hospital and the War Museum, but Franju turned it into a film against the glorification of militarism. Franju later said that Hôtel des Invalides was his favorite of his three "slaughter" films.

In her study of French cinema since the French new wave, Claire Clouzot described Franju's film style as "a poignant fantastic realism inherited from surrealism and Jean Painlevé science cinema, and influenced by the expressionism of Lang and Murnau". Franju's focus was on the visual aspect of filmmaking, which he claimed marked a director as an auteur. Franju claimed to "not have the story writing gift" and was focused on what he described as the "putting into form" of the film. Franju used elements of surrealism and shock horror within his films in order to "awaken" his audience. Franju had a long history of friendship with well known surrealists including André Breton, and the influence of this movement is extremely evident in his works. Franju uses these elements to link horror, history, and an ironic commentary on modernity's ideal of progress. Franju is quoted as having said "It's the bad combination, it's the wrong synthesis, constantly being made by the eye as it looks around, that stops us from seeing everything as strange." Throughout his documentary Le Sang des bêtes, for example, Franju reminds the audience just how strange everyday life can be. The opening sequence of the film presents the modern age as a "dream land" in which there is a need for some sort of awakening; Franju's awakening comes through historical knowledge. Surrealist depictions of strange mannequins on the city's edge are reminiscent of the bodies of the men wounded in war. Walter Benjamin argued that surrealism must "disturb capitalist culture's mythic assumptions of a rationalized evolving history" which is done by provoking a simultaneous interpretation of the past and the present. This, as Benjamin argues, relies on the recognition of horror within everyday life. Franju does this in many ways throughout Le Sang des bêtes. For example, "La Mer" plays during a sequence in the slaughterhouse, comparing the lyrics to aspects of the slaughter, forcing the audience to interpret the love song in new and horrific ways. A similar contradiction can be seen in the film during scenes in which voiceover narration is used. The use of voiceover in the film works to undermine the form of a more typical documentary film. By alternating male and female narrators, the clinical, typically masculine authority of the documentary film is undermined. During the scene in which the instruments of slaughter are examined, the contradiction between the clinical account of the use of the instruments and the visceral horror of the instruments themselves points out the horrors that are ignored by modern society. The same is true of Franju's most famous film, Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face), which also uses aspects of the scientific documentary film to accentuate horror. Les Yeux sans visage proved so horrific that audience members in Edinburgh fainted during screenings. During the most graphic grafting scene in the film a large importance is placed on surgical lamps, the scalpel being used, gloves, masks, and operating tables. Once again, the contradiction between the methodical, scientific approach to this horrific situation and the situation itself serves to accentuate the horror. Les Yeux sans visage also uses surrealist elements to address aspects of post war life. During one scene, loud, disrupting noises of an airplane and church bells are heard while Dr. Genessier and Louise bury a failed facial graft candidate. This scene serves to portray the loss of faith in medicine (represented by the body created by another of Dr. Genessier's many failed attempts to complete this surgery), the progress of technology (represented by the airplane), and the comfort of religion (represented by the church bells). This surrealist combination forces a new view of modernity and thus a reevaluation of the past.

YearFilmEnglish titleNotes1935Le Metroco directed with Henri Langlois1948Le Sang des bêtesBlood of the Beasts1950En passant par la Lorraine1951Hôtel des Invalides1952Le Grand Méliès1952Monsieur et Madame Curie1954Les Poussières1954Navigation MarchandeFilm renounced by Franju.1955A propos d'une rivière1955Mon chien1956Le Théâtre national populaire1956Sur le pont d'Avignon1957Notre dame, cathédrale de Paris1958La Première Nuit1959[[Head Against the WallHead Against the Wall1960Les Yeux sans visageEyes Without a Face1961Pleins feux sur l'assassinSpotlight on a Murderer1962Thérèse DesqueyrouxTherese1963JudexRemake of 1916 French serial film1965Thomas l'imposteurThomas the ImpostorEntered into the 15th Berlin International Film Festival1965Les Rideaux blancsThe Moment of PeaceLes rideaux blancs segment1965Marcel AllainShort documentary about the writer1970[[The Demise of Father MouretThe Demise of Father Mouret1973La ligne d'ombreThe Shadow LineBased on the novella The Shadow Line (1917) by Joseph Conrad1974Nuits rougesShadowman