Eugène Lourié
Encyclopedia
Eugène Lourié was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

, art director
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....

, production designer
Production designer
In film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...

, set designer
Scenic design
Scenic design is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers have traditionally come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but nowadays, generally speaking, they are trained professionals, often with M.F.A...

 and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

 who was known for his collaborations with Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...

 and for his 1950s science fiction
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...

 movies. Allmovie contributor, Sandra Brennan, has wrote that he was "among the best art directors in French cinema." He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1969 for best visual effects on the film Krakatoa, East of Java
Krakatoa, East of Java
Krakatoa, East of Java is a movie starring Maximilian Schell and Brian Keith. This film was nominated for Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.-Plot:...

.

Early life

Lourié was born in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 in 1903.
His first experience with cinema was in 1911 when a movie theater opened in Kharkov. In 1919, he worked on an anti-communist film titled Black Crowes. After he fled from the Soviet Union, he made his way to Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

. While there he made money for a fare to Paris, France by painting and drawing movie posters. He even slept in the theater on top of a piano to save money.

Film career

In the 1930s, he worked as a production designer for such directors as Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...

, Max Ophuls
Max Ophüls
Maximillian Oppenheimer — known as Max Ophüls — was an influential German-born film director who worked in Germany , France , the United States , and France again...

, and René Clair
René Clair
René Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...

. As an assistant and production designer to Renoir, he worked on such French films as La Grande illusion
Grand Illusion (film)
Grand Illusion is a 1937 French war film directed by Jean Renoir, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Spaak. The story concerns class relationships among a small group of French officers who are prisoners of war during World War I and are plotting an escape.The title of the film comes from a...

and La Règle du Jeu
The Rules of the Game
The Rules of the Game is a 1939 French film directed by Jean Renoir about upper-class French society just before the start of World War II...

. After Renoir had moved to Hollywood in the early 1940s, Lourié moved as well and worked with other directors including Sam Fuller, Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...

, and Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak was a German born American film director. He is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for the series of Hollywood film noirs he made in the 1940s.-Early life:...

. Then in 1953 he made his directorial debut with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Eugène Lourié and stars Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway with visual effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film is about an atomic bomb test in the Arctic Circle that unfreezes a hibernating fictional dinosaur, a...

, the first of three dinosaur films that Lourié would direct. The film was profitable, however Lourié has said that he regrets that the film typecast him as a science fiction director. He decided that after his 1961 film, Gorgo, he would stop directing movies because he did not want to direct "the same comic-strip monsters." Eight years later, he received an Academy Award nomination for his visual effects on Krakatoa, East of Java
Krakatoa, East of Java
Krakatoa, East of Java is a movie starring Maximilian Schell and Brian Keith. This film was nominated for Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.-Plot:...

.

In 1980, Lourié designed Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...

's Bronco Billy
Bronco Billy
Bronco Billy is a 1980 American film starring Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke. It was directed by Eastwood and written by Dennis Hackin.-Plot:...

. Lourié also had an acting part in Richard Gere
Richard Gere
Richard Tiffany Gere is an American actor. He began acting in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a starring role in Days of Heaven. He came to prominence in 1980 for his role in the film American Gigolo, which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol...

's 1983 picture, Breathless
Breathless (1983 film)
Breathless is a 1983 American drama film starring Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky. It is a remake of the 1960 French film À bout de souffle and was released in France under the title A Bout de Souffle Made in USA. The original film is about an American girl and a French criminal in Paris...

.

Death

Lourié died on 26 May 1991 due to a stroke in the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills.
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