Alain Resnais facts for kids

Alain Resnais (born June 3, 1922 – died March 1, 2014) was a famous French film director and writer. He made movies for over sixty years.

He first learned to edit films in the 1940s. Then he started directing short films. One important short film was Night and Fog (1956). It was a powerful documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.

Resnais began making longer movies in the late 1950s. His early well-known films include Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and Muriel (1963). These films used new ways of telling stories. They often explored themes of memory and the past.

His films were made around the same time as the French New Wave movement. But Resnais did not see himself as fully part of that group. He was more connected to the "Left Bank" filmmakers. This group liked modern art and had an interest in left-wing politics. Resnais often worked with writers who had not made movies before. These writers included Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet.

In his later films, Resnais moved away from political topics. He became more interested in how movies connect with other art forms. These included theatre, music, and comic books. He made creative adaptations of plays by Alan Ayckbourn and Jean Anouilh. He also made films that used popular songs.

His movies often looked at how our minds, memories, and imagination work. He was known for creating new and interesting ways to structure his stories. Throughout his career, he won many awards from film festivals and academies around the world.

Growing Up and Early Studies

Where Alain Resnais Was Born

Alain Resnais was born in 1922 in Vannes, a town in Brittany, France. His father was a pharmacist. Alain was an only child and was often sick with asthma when he was young. Because of this, he was taught at home instead of going to school.

His Early Interests

He loved to read all kinds of books, from classic stories to comic books. When he was 10, he became very interested in films. For his twelfth birthday, his parents gave him a Kodak 8mm camera. He started making his own short films with it. One was a three-minute version of Fantômas. Around age 14, he discovered surrealism, an art movement. This led him to the works of André Breton.

Studying Film and Theatre

Resnais wanted to be an actor after seeing plays in Paris. In 1939, he moved to Paris to work as an assistant for a theatre company. From 1940 to 1942, he studied acting. He even had a small role as an extra in the film Les Visiteurs du soir. But in 1943, he decided to study film editing at a new film school called IDHEC. The filmmaker Jean Grémillon was one of his most important teachers.

After school, Resnais did his military service from 1945. He went to Germany and Austria. He also joined a traveling theatre group for a short time. In 1946, he returned to Paris to start his career as a film editor. But he also began making his own short films.

Alain Resnais's Film Career

Early Short Films (1946–1958)

Resnais started by making short documentaries about artists. In 1948, he was asked to make a film about the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. This film, Van Gogh, won a prize at the Venice Biennale in 1948. It also won an Oscar for Best Short Subject in 1949.

He continued to make films about art, like Gauguin (1950) and Guernica (1950). Guernica looked at Pablo Picasso's famous painting about the bombing of a town. Another film, Statues Also Die (1953), talked about how French colonialism affected African art.

Night and Fog (1956)

Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog, 1956) was one of the first documentaries about the Nazi concentration camps. Resnais used a special way to make this film. He mixed old black-and-white photos of the camps with new color videos of the empty sites. This helped show the horror without making it seem too real. The film's story was written by Jean Cayrol, who had survived the camps. This film had a huge impact and is still highly respected.

Other Short Films

In Toute la mémoire du monde (1956), Resnais explored the vast National Library of France. In 1958, he made a short film for a company called Pechiney. It was about plastics and was called Le Chant du styrène. The famous writer Raymond Queneau wrote the rhyming story for it.

During this time, Resnais often worked with talented people from other art fields. He worked with writers, musicians, and other filmmakers. This teamwork became a key part of his future feature films.

First Feature Films (1959–1968)

Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

Resnais's first full-length movie was Hiroshima mon amour (1959). It was supposed to be a documentary about the atomic bomb. But Resnais felt it was too hard to show such suffering directly. So, he worked with writer Marguerite Duras. They created a mix of fiction and documentary. The film explored memory and forgetting using new storytelling methods. It was shown at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and became linked to the new French New Wave movement.

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

His next film was L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961). He made it with writer Alain Robbe-Grillet. The story is confusing and jumps around. It shows three main characters in a grand hotel. They keep talking about whether they met a year ago. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It made people think a lot about how movies tell stories.

Films About War and Politics

In the early 1960s, France was dealing with the Algerian War. Resnais signed a statement protesting French military policy. The war's difficulties were a main theme in his film Muriel (1963). This film used a broken storyline to show the characters' thoughts. It was one of the first French films to touch on the Algerian experience.

Another political issue was the focus of La guerre est finie (The War Is Over, 1966). This film was about people secretly working against the Franco government in Spain. Resnais worked with Spanish writer Jorge Semprún on this film. In 1967, Resnais also joined other directors to make a film about the Vietnam war, Far from Vietnam.

After 1968, Resnais's films stopped focusing directly on big political issues. His next film, Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968), was a science-fiction story. It was about a man sent back into his past. This allowed Resnais to explore fragmented time again.

Later Films (1969–2014)

Resnais spent time in America working on different projects. He also published a book of his photographs called Repérages.

Stavisky (1974) and Providence (1977)

He then worked with Jorge Semprun again on Stavisky (1974). This film was based on the life of a famous financier whose story caused a big political stir in 1934. It had fancy costumes and music by Stephen Sondheim. It was seen as one of Resnais's most commercial films.

With Providence (1977), Resnais made his first English-language film. It starred John Gielgud. The story is about an old writer dealing with different versions of his past for his book. Resnais wanted the film to be humorous, even with its dark topic.

My American Uncle (1980)

Mon oncle d'Amérique (My American Uncle, 1980) was very creative. It mixed ideas from a scientist about animal behavior with three fictional stories. It also showed clips of classic French actors. The film won several awards, including the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. It was also very popular with audiences.

Music and Theatre in Films

From the 1980s, Resnais became very interested in using music and theatre in his films. He often worked with the same group of actors, including Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi.

His film La vie est un roman (Life Is a Bed of Roses, 1983) was a funny fantasy. It wove together three stories from different times. The film included songs that became almost like an opera. Resnais said he wanted to make a film where talking and singing would switch back and forth.

Music was also important in L'Amour à mort (Love unto Death, 1984). For this intense film, Resnais asked a composer to create music that would act like a "fifth character." Later, Resnais focused on popular music. He made Gershwin (1992), a TV documentary about the American composer. In On connaît la chanson (Same Old Song, 1997), characters sing parts of famous popular songs to show their feelings. His film Pas sur la bouche (Not on the Lips, 2003) was based on an old operetta. He tried to make this old form of entertainment exciting again for the camera.

Resnais often included references to theatre in his films. But he first fully adapted a play for the screen with Mélo (1986). He stayed true to the 1929 play and filmed it on large, artificial sets. After a film about comic books, I Want to Go Home (1989), he made a big theatre adaptation called Smoking/No Smoking (1993). This was based on Alan Ayckbourn's play Intimate Exchanges, which had many possible endings. Resnais made two films from it, with the same actors playing all the roles. He returned to Ayckbourn's plays later with Cœurs (2006).

Resnais said he didn't separate cinema and theatre. He liked working with "people of the theatre." He also said he would never film a novel. So, it was a surprise when he chose a novel for Les Herbes folles (Wild Grass, 2009). He explained that he loved the book's dialogue, which he kept in the film. At the Cannes Film Festival, Resnais received a special award for his amazing work in cinema.

In his last two films, Resnais again used theatre as his source. Vous n'avez encore rien vu (You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!, 2012) was based on two plays by Jean Anouilh. It brought together many actors who had worked with Resnais before. His final film, Aimer, boire et chanter (2014), was his third film based on an Alan Ayckbourn play. It won an award at the Berlin Film Festival just weeks before Resnais passed away.

His Reputation and Style

Connection to the New Wave

Alain Resnais was often linked to the French New Wave filmmakers who became famous in the late 1950s. But he had already made a name for himself with his short documentaries. He said he wasn't fully part of the New Wave because of his age. But he felt friendly with them and respected them. He also said the New Wave helped him make his first feature film, Hiroshima mon amour.

The "Left Bank" Group

Resnais was more closely connected to the "Left Bank" group of writers and filmmakers. This group included Agnès Varda and Chris Marker. They were known for their interest in documentaries, left-wing politics, and new ways of writing stories.

Love for Popular Culture

Resnais also loved popular culture. He had one of the biggest private collections of comic books in France. In 1962, he helped start an International Society for Comic Books.

Working with Others

Many people have noted how important teamwork was in Resnais's films. He always refused to write his own screenplays. He valued the writers he worked with very much. He was also known for sticking very closely to the finished script. Sometimes, his screenwriters even said that the final film was exactly what they had imagined. When he did help write a script, he used the name Alex Reval.

Themes of Time and Memory

Time and memory are often seen as main themes in Resnais's early films. However, he preferred to talk about "the imaginary" or "consciousness." He was interested in our ability to imagine things and remember what happened. He saw his films as an attempt to show how complex our thoughts are.

Evolution of His Work

Some people think Resnais moved from making realistic films about big topics to more personal and playful ones. Resnais explained this change. When he started, most movies were just for fun. So, he felt he needed to explore social and political issues. But later, when political films became common, he wanted to try something different. He then focused on experimenting with new ways of telling stories.

Criticism and Appreciation

Some English-speaking critics have said Resnais's films are "cold" or too focused on technique. They felt his films lacked emotion or connection to characters. However, others believe these views misunderstand his work. They point out the humor and irony in his films. Many viewers found a strong human connection in his unique film styles.

Resnais believed that form was the starting point of his work. He usually had an idea for a structure before the plot or characters. For him, this was how feelings were shared. He said, "There cannot be any communication except through form. If there is no form, you cannot create emotion in the spectator."

The term "surrealism" often comes up when talking about Resnais's films. This goes from his documentary about a library to the dreamlike Marienbad. Resnais himself linked this to his teenage discovery of surrealism. He hoped to always be true to the idea that imaginary life is part of real life.

Personal Life

In 1969, Resnais married Florence Malraux. She was the daughter of a French statesman. She often worked as an assistant director on his films. His second wife was Sabine Azéma, an actress who appeared in most of his films from 1983 onwards. They married in England in 1998.

Resnais described his religious views as a "mystical atheist."

Alain Resnais passed away in Paris on March 1, 2014. He was buried in Montparnasse cemetery.

Awards

• Academy Award: 1950 for "Van Gogh" (1948) – Best Short Subject.
• Prix Jean Vigo: 1954 for Les statues meurent aussi; 1956 for Nuit et Brouillard.
• César Award: 1977 Best Director for Providence; 1993 Best Director for Smoking/No Smoking.
• Prix Louis-Delluc: 1966 for La guerre est finie; 1993 for Smoking/No Smoking; 1997 for On connaît la chanson.
• Lumières Award for Best Director: 2004 for Pas sur la bouche.
• Venice Film Festival: 1960 Golden Lion for L'Année dernière à Marienbad; 2006 Silver Lion for Cœurs.
• Berlin Film Festival: 1994 Silver Bear for Smoking/No Smoking; 1998 Silver Bear for On connaît la chanson; 2014 Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize for Aimer, boire et chanter.
• Cannes Film Festival: 1980 Grand Prix for Mon oncle d'Amérique; 2009 Lifetime achievement award.

Filmography, as director

Feature films

Short films etc.

Images for kids

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  Sabine Azéma (1996).

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  At the 2012 Cannes Festival, centered: Azéma and Resnais.

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  Resnais's tomb at Montparnasse cemetery (division 4).

See also

In Spanish: Alain Resnais para niños