Jean Aurenche

Jean Aurenche (1903–1992) was a French screenwriter. During his career, he wrote 80 films for directors such as René Clément, Bertrand Tavernier, Marcel Carné, Jean Delannoy and Claude Autant-Lara. He is often associated with the screenwriter Pierre Bost, with whom he had a fertile partnership from 1940 to 1975.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Jean Aurenche was friends with some members of the surrealist groups. His sister Marie-Berthe was the wife of Max Ernst and Max Ernst soon became friend with Jean Aurenche. Later, he even appeared in some film commercials directed by Jean Aurenche (for the “Nicolas” Wine, the “Barbes” stores and so on…). Jean Aurenche was also a close friend of Jean Cocteau who helped him publish several of his short stories in the famous “NRF”.

In 1933, Jean Aurenche co-directed two short documentaries with Pierre Charbonnier: Pirates du Rhône and Bracos de Sologne. He later co-wrote the short film Monsieur Cordon with director Pierre Prévert. He soon turned to screenwriting, writing or co-writing several films like L’affaire du Courrier de Lyon (1936) by Maurice Lehmann and Claude Autant-Lara, L’affaire Lafarge or, more famously, Hôtel du Nord that he co-wrote with Marcel Carné and Henri Jeanson.

In 1942, starting with Douce (directed by Autant-Lara), Aurenche formed a longstanding partnership with Pierre Bost. Their method of writing together initially worked as such: Jean Aurenche wrote the treatment of the screenplay (sometimes based on a novel) and Pierre Bost then expanded this outline and wrote the dialogue. But soon, both of them wrote all the script together without any clear division of the writing. Together, Aurenche & Bost wrote several great successes of this time period, often associated with director Claude Autant-Lara : le Diable au corps (1945), l’Auberge rouge (1951), le Rouge et le Noir (1954), la Traversée de Paris (1956). Meanwhile, Aurenche & Bost started a fertile collaboration with Jean Delannoy, writing for him La Symphonie Pastorale (1947) which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival of 1947. During this time, they also worked with René Clément (Au-delà des grilles, Jeux interdits and Gervaise). The film Jeux Interdits won the Academy Award on the Best Foreign Film in 1952 and soon became a classic. All these critic and commercial triumph contributed to make of Aurenche one of the most revered screenwriters of his time. …

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