Pierre Chenal

Directing

Pierre Chenal

Born 1904-12-05 · Bruxelles, Belgique

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.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Native Son poster
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

Native Son poster
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

Crime and Punishment poster
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

Crime and Punishment poster
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

Alibi poster
6.6

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

Devil and the Angel poster
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

The Mutineers of Elsinore poster
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.

The Mutineers of Elsinore

1936

The Mutineers of Elsinore poster
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.

The Mutineers of Elsinore

1936

Scandals of Clochemerle poster
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

Dangerous Games poster
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

Dangerous Games poster
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

El viaje sin regreso poster
NR

At the core of this enormously bleak melodrama, there is a beautiful, passionate woman (Florence Marly, Chenal's wife) who capriciously oscillates between two men (Chiola, De Paula), even though she knows her fate is fatally linked to one of them.

El viaje sin regreso

1946

The Last Turning poster
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

A Real Man poster
6.5

A foreign woman marries a rich man.

A Real Man

1943

Sinners of Paris poster
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

Sinners of Paris poster
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

Fat Man's Worries poster
8.0

A young lady whose husband has been seeing someone else decides to make him jealous by flirting with the unlikely prospect of a fat man.Is it worth that guy's trouble to try to lose some weight, or is he kidding himself?

Fat Man's Worries

1933

The Lafarge Case poster
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

Bâtir poster
10.0

After filming the construction site of the Berlitz Palace (2nd), Pierre Chenal shows us in contrast other contemporary architectural achievements which, using the same technical processes, do not sacrifice the structure of iron and concrete for decoration. A documentary to the glory of the modern designs of Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier.

Bâtir

1931

Bâtir poster
10.0

After filming the construction site of the Berlitz Palace (2nd), Pierre Chenal shows us in contrast other contemporary architectural achievements which, using the same technical processes, do not sacrifice the structure of iron and concrete for decoration. A documentary to the glory of the modern designs of Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier.

Bâtir

1931

Bâtir poster
10.0

After filming the construction site of the Berlitz Palace (2nd), Pierre Chenal shows us in contrast other contemporary architectural achievements which, using the same technical processes, do not sacrifice the structure of iron and concrete for decoration. A documentary to the glory of the modern designs of Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier.

Bâtir

1931

Se abre el abismo poster
7.0

The arbitrariness of an evil father leads his children to patricide.

Se abre el abismo

1945

The Night They Killed Rasputin poster
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

The Night They Killed Rasputin poster
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