Jean Dréville

Director

September 20, 1906 (90 years)

† March 5, 1997

Vitry-sur-Seine, Val-de-Marne, France

Biography

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 Cho…

Filmography

6.9

The Leatherstocking Tales

German miniseries based upon the novel, The Last of the Mohicans.

5.9

Lafayette

The story of Lafayette, the 19 year old pacifist who takes the side of the Colonials during the American war of Independence.

7.1

Queen Margot

Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Catherine de Médicis, celebrates her wedding with Henri de Navarre. Officially, it's a rapprochement between the League and the Huguenots. In fact, it was an opportunity to bring all the Huguenots to Paris and kill them all at once. King Charles IX fails in his attempt on Coligny's life. Queen Margot tries to save her husband from the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre by preventing the annulment of his marriage, forcing Henri to share her bed. Two knights from opposing camps are wounded and, saved în extremis, are hidden together by the queen and her cousin. Margot falls in love with one of them, but has to run to warn her husband of a new attack...

7.5

Le Voyageur des siècles

No description available

8.0

Tornavara

In a lost village in Lapland, Gérard comes to the aid of his friend Anders, in conflict with his father, a rich owner of gold mines.

6.0

The Seven Deadly Sins

A compilation of segments covers the seven deadly sins of greed, wrath, envy, pride, lust, sloth, and gluttony.

7.6

A Cage of Nightingales

In France, in 1930, a supervisor of a boarding school for young offenders seeks to awaken the music by forming a choir, despite the skepticism of his boarding school director.

7.0

Das Geheimnis vom Bergsee

Pietro Ponz lives a happy life in the mountains on the Swiss-Italian border with his mother Lamberta. No one but his mother knows that Pietro is a girl, a deception that Lamberta was forced into by a series of tragedies almost twenty years previously. Not long after her husband Joseph Ponz died, Lamberta also lost her fragile infant son, Pietro. Whilst mourning this double loss, she began an affair with Bolzano, a notorious smuggler. After Bolzano was killed by the customs men, Lamberta gave birth to his child, a little girl that she decided to pass off as her son Pietro, in the hope of securing an inheritance from her husband's wealthy parents. Now that Pietro is fast coming of age, his tutor and grandmother are adamant that he should be sent to a religious school. Pietro escapes from the school and joins a gang of smugglers...

5.3

The Chess Player

A toymaker in Poland specializes in building lifesize mechanical men. He builds a chess-playing "automaton" to hide a pretty young Polish activist who is being hunted by occupying Russian forces.

6.4

Return to Life

In France in 1946, the difficult return to civilian life of five deportees and prisoners of war after having lived through the hell of the Second World War.

6.7

Tainted

Louberger, director of an orphanage, is full of praise for a former boarder, Mr. Sauval, who has become their benefactor. One night he arrives and he does not seem to be exactly the man described by Louberger. He has in fact become a crooked lawyer and he is wanted for a crime he has just committed. Despite his efforts he will not escape the police but he will manage to remain, in the eyes of the children, at the height of his legend.

6.0

Les Cadets de l'océan

In the harbor of Toulon, on the “Ocean” training ship, the apprenticeship of the cabin boys and experts of the Navy is punctuated by permissions in town, friendships, bullying, and loves.

6.2

Carbon Copy

A smooth criminal, who turns to be Manuel Ismora, and his gang successfully and peacefully pull off con after heist. Elsewhere a timid office worker, Gabriel Dupon, is pressured by his boss...

6.7

Le Bonheur

Philippe Lutcher, an anarchist, fires a shot at Clara Stuart, a famous stage and screen actress, but only wounds her. The star, through affectation and curiosity to know his motives, pleads in his favour at his trial, but he rebuffs her pity. After he has served 18 months in prison, they meet and fall in love.

5.4

Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water

A factual reconstruction of the sabotage events which took place to prevent Hitler's Germany from getting the heavy water needed to make an atomic bomb during the Second World War.

5.2

Normandy - Neman

A certain number of French fighter pilots who will not accept the Second Armistice at Compiègne nor Vichy's orders decide to join the USSR. Once they have reached Moscow they resume training and form a squadron they call "Normandie". Reinforced in 1944, the squadron wins many victories. Following the acts of valor displayed by its pilots during the Battle of the Nieman River, it becomes the "Normandie-Niemen" squadron for the rest of times...

10.0

The Girl with the Whip

The daughter of a notorious smuggler is raised as a boy by her foster mother.

6.8

Business Is Business

Isidore Lechat is a ruthless self-made man whose money allows him to humiliate the others, particularly a ruined noble: he wants his daughter to marry this marquis's son but the girl is in love with a young scientist.

8.0

Troïka sur la piste blanche

Wife of an arms trafficker in Poland, Georgina is forced to help him. She will only be able to regain her freedom - and love - after a troika chase during which the trafficker loses his life.

6.0

Intermediate Landing in Paris

Michèle, 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.