Alexandre Astruc

Born in Paris on July 13th 1923, Alexandre Astruc is the son of a couple of journalists. Very good at school, he attended a preparatory school for Polytechnique but finally became both a law and an arts graduate. First a literary critic, he soon specialized as a film critic and worked for various papers and magazines such as "Combat", "La Gazette du Cinéma", "L'Ecran français", "La Nef", "Ciné-Digest", "Les Cahiers du Cinéma". He was instrumental in the creation of the film club "Objectif 49" and of the "Festival du Film Maudit" in Biarritz (circa 1949/50). His first two works were sixteen millimeter films characteristic of the Saint Germain des Prés" era. In the fifties and early sixties he directed very personal, elegant, literary movies but found it harder and harder to find producers interested in his style. He turned to television and novel writing instead.