Jean Dréville
Director · 1906 – 1997 · Vitry-sur-Seine, Val-de-Marne, France
Jean Dréville was a prolific French film director whose career spanned from the late 1920s to the late 1960s. Initially trained in advertising design and photography, he began his cinematic journey by publishing articles in film sections of newspapers like L'Intransigeant and Comœdia. Dréville directed his first film, Autour de L'Argent (1928), a documentary on the making of Marcel L'Herbier's L'Argent. His notable works include A Cage of Nightingales (1945), which inspired the 2004 film The Chorus, and The Battle of the Rails (1946), a realistic portrayal of French railway workers' resistance during World War II. Dréville's films are recognized for their narrative clarity and humanistic approach.
Movies3
Movie9.0DocumentaryHistoryParis, 1940. German occupation forces create a new film production company, Continental, and put Alfred Greven – producer, cinephile, and opportunistic businessman – in charge. During the occupation, under Joseph Goebbels’s orders, Greven hires the best artists and technicians of French cinema to produce successful, highly entertaining films, which are also strategically devoid of propaganda. Simultaneously, he takes advantage of the confiscation of Jewish property to purchase film theaters, studios and laboratories, in order to control the whole production line. His goal: to create a European Hollywood. Among the thirty feature films thus produced under the auspices of Continental, several are, to this day, considered classics of French cinema.
Movie6.0ComedyCrimeMichèle, an employee at the airport, is in love with American pilot Eddie Miller who regularly flies the route from New York to Paris, but problems arise when he is transferred to the Tokyo route. Meanwhile Michèle's uncle Albert who works in the freight department sets out to tackle a drug trafficking outfit.
Movie8.0DramaCrimeCommissaire Perrache, the chief of the D.S.T., the French domestic intelligence service, tries to neutralize a group of terrorists named the Partisans de la Métropole. He sends one of his best agents, inspector Louis Vignon, incidentally the husband of his charming secretary Lucette, on the trail of an illegal transmitter. But Vignon gets kidnapped by the gang and held captive on a boat off the shores of Monaco...