Mitry, Jean

(Jean René-Pierre Goetgheluck Le Rouge Tillard des Acres de Préfontaines / November 7, 1904, Soissons, Aisne, France - January 18, 1988, Paris, France)

   A movie buff since childhood, he started his profes­sional life as a press drawer and commercial artist. He ran film clubs and wrote in the first French magazines (Cinégraphie, Pour vous, Cinéa). In the late 1920s, he fre­quented studios as an extra, trainee assistant director (1927 Napoléon / Napoléon vu par Abel Gance / USA: Na­poléon / Abel Gance's Napoleon, Abel Gance), and actor (1932 La Nuit du Carrefour, Jean Renoir). In 1936, he co-founded with Georges Franju and Henri Langlois the French Cinematheque. Known mostly as a film theo­retician and historian, he authored many books, includ­ing a Filmographie universelle (thirty volumes published from 1963 to 1972, IDHEC), Dictionnaire du Cinéma (Larousse, 1963), and Histoire du Cinéma: Art et Industrie (three volumes, Presses Universitaires de France, 1967, 1969, 1973). He directed films from 1949 to 1962, co-wrote the screenplay of Le Quatrième Sexe / USA: The Fourth Sex (also dialogist, Michel Wichard, José Benaz-eraf), and appeared as himself in documentaries (1968 Cinéastes de notre Temps, episode "La première Vague", Noël Burch, Jean-André Fieschi; 1980 Une Approche d'Alain Resnais, Révolutionnaire discret, Michel Leclerc). He was a professor at the IDHEC.

 Filmography

1929 ◘ Paris Cinéma (documentary, short)

        ◘ Pacific 231 (documentary; short; also screenwriter)

        ◘ Le Paquebot Liberté (documentary; short)

        ◘ Rêverie pour Claude Debussy (documentary; short)

        ◘ En Bateau (documentary; short)

        ◘ Rêveries de Debussy (documentary; short)

1952 ◘ Images pour Debussy (documentary; short)

        ◘ Eaux vives (documentary; short)

        ◘ Au Pays des Grandes Causses (documentary; short)

1953 ◘ Hommes d'Aujourd'hui (documentary; short)

        ◘ Symphonie mécanique (documentary; short)

        ◘ Le Miracle des Ailes (documentary; short)

        ◘ Ecoles de Pilotage (documentary; short)

        ◘ La Machine humaine (documentary; short)

        ◘ Chopin (documentary; short)

        ◘ Ecrire en Images (documentary; short)

        ◘ Enigme aux Folies Bergère

        ◘ Rencontres (documentary; short)

        ◘ La Grande Foire (documentary; short; co-director with André Valio)

1962 ◘ Les Héros de l'Air (documentary; short)

        ◘ La Machine et l'Homme (documentary; short)