Jean Dréville (1906-1997)

Alias:
Jean Dreville

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

Born:
September 20, 1906

Died:
March 5, 1997

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.

Additional information:

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Assistant Director:
1934  Le Bonheur
1939  Savage Brigade

Camera Operator:
1932  Creosote
1934  Le Bonheur
1939  Savage Brigade

Cinematography:
1931  Romania, land of love
1932  Creosote
1934  Le Bonheur
1939  Savage Brigade

Director:
1929  Autour de l'argent
1930  Physiopolis
1931  Romania, land of love
1932  Candy Apple
1932  Creosote
1934  A Man and His Woman
1934  Le Bonheur
1934  Trois pour cent
1935  Touche-à-tout
1936  Coup de vent
1936  Les Petites Alliées
1937  Mama Hummingbird
1937  Troïka sur la piste blanche
1938  Les Nuits blanches de Saint-Pétersbourg
1938  The Chess Player
1939  His Uncle from Normandy
1939  Savage Brigade
1940  President Haudecoeur
1942  Annette and the Blonde Woman
1942  Business Is Business
1943  The Roquevillards
1943  Tornavara
1945  A Cage of Nightingales
1945  Hanged Man's Farm
1945  Les Cadets de l'océan
1946  Tainted
1947  Carbon Copy
1948  Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water
1948  The Spice of Life
1949  Return to Life
1950  The Big Meeting
1952  Das Geheimnis vom Bergsee
1952  The Girl with the Whip
1952  The Seven Deadly Sins
1953  Endless Horizons
1954  Queen Margot
1955  Intermediate Landing in Paris
1957  The Suspects
1958  A Dog, A Mouse and a Sputnik
1958  The Lady and the Gipsy
1960  Normandy - Neman
1962  Lafayette
1965  Nights of Farewell
1966  The Sleeping Sentinel

Producer:
1929  Autour de l'argent
1930  Physiopolis
1931  Romania, land of love
1932  Candy Apple
1932  Creosote
1934  A Man and His Woman
1934  Le Bonheur
1934  Trois pour cent
1935  Touche-à-tout
1936  Coup de vent
1936  Les Petites Alliées
1937  Mama Hummingbird
1937  Troïka sur la piste blanche
1938  Les Nuits blanches de Saint-Pétersbourg
1938  The Chess Player
1939  His Uncle from Normandy
1939  Savage Brigade
1940  President Haudecoeur
1942  Annette and the Blonde Woman
1942  Business Is Business
1943  The Roquevillards
1943  Tornavara
1945  A Cage of Nightingales
1945  Hanged Man's Farm
1945  Les Cadets de l'océan
1946  Tainted
1947  Carbon Copy
1948  Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water
1948  The Spice of Life
1949  Return to Life
1950  The Big Meeting
1952  Das Geheimnis vom Bergsee
1952  The Girl with the Whip
1952  The Seven Deadly Sins
1953  Endless Horizons
1954  Queen Margot
1955  Intermediate Landing in Paris
1957  The Suspects
1958  A Dog, A Mouse and a Sputnik
1958  The Lady and the Gipsy
1960  Normandy - Neman
1962  Lafayette
1965  Nights of Farewell
1966  The Sleeping Sentinel

Screenplay:
1929  Autour de l'argent
1930  Physiopolis
1931  Romania, land of love
1932  Candy Apple
1932  Creosote
1934  A Man and His Woman
1934  Le Bonheur
1934  Trois pour cent
1935  Touche-à-tout
1936  Coup de vent
1936  Les Petites Alliées
1937  Mama Hummingbird
1937  Troïka sur la piste blanche
1938  Les Nuits blanches de Saint-Pétersbourg
1938  The Chess Player
1939  His Uncle from Normandy
1939  Savage Brigade
1940  President Haudecoeur
1942  Annette and the Blonde Woman
1942  Business Is Business
1943  The Roquevillards
1943  Tornavara
1945  A Cage of Nightingales
1945  Hanged Man's Farm
1945  Les Cadets de l'océan
1946  Tainted
1947  Carbon Copy
1948  Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water
1948  The Spice of Life
1949  Return to Life
1950  The Big Meeting
1952  Das Geheimnis vom Bergsee
1952  The Girl with the Whip
1952  The Seven Deadly Sins
1953  Endless Horizons
1954  Queen Margot
1955  Intermediate Landing in Paris
1957  The Suspects
1958  A Dog, A Mouse and a Sputnik
1958  The Lady and the Gipsy
1960  Normandy - Neman
1962  Lafayette
1965  Nights of Farewell
1966  The Sleeping Sentinel

Technical Supervisor:
1929  Autour de l'argent
1929  Cagliostro
1930  Physiopolis
1931  Romania, land of love
1932  Candy Apple
1932  Creosote
1934  A Man and His Woman
1934  Le Bonheur
1934  Trois pour cent
1935  Touche-à-tout
1936  Coup de vent
1936  Les Petites Alliées
1937  Mama Hummingbird
1937  Troïka sur la piste blanche
1938  Les Nuits blanches de Saint-Pétersbourg
1938  The Chess Player
1939  His Uncle from Normandy
1939  Savage Brigade
1940  President Haudecoeur
1942  Annette and the Blonde Woman
1942  Business Is Business
1943  The Roquevillards
1943  Tornavara
1945  A Cage of Nightingales
1945  Hanged Man's Farm
1945  Les Cadets de l'océan
1946  Tainted
1947  Carbon Copy
1948  Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water
1948  The Spice of Life
1949  Return to Life
1950  The Big Meeting
1952  Das Geheimnis vom Bergsee
1952  The Girl with the Whip
1952  The Seven Deadly Sins
1953  Endless Horizons
1954  Queen Margot
1955  Intermediate Landing in Paris
1957  The Suspects
1958  A Dog, A Mouse and a Sputnik
1958  The Lady and the Gipsy
1960  Normandy - Neman
1962  Lafayette
1965  Nights of Farewell
1966  The Sleeping Sentinel

Writer:
1929  Autour de l'argent
1929  Cagliostro
1930  Physiopolis
1931  Romania, land of love
1932  Candy Apple
1932  Creosote
1934  A Man and His Woman
1934  Le Bonheur
1934  Trois pour cent
1935  Touche-à-tout
1936  Coup de vent
1936  Les Petites Alliées
1937  Mama Hummingbird
1937  Troïka sur la piste blanche
1938  Les Nuits blanches de Saint-Pétersbourg
1938  The Chess Player
1939  His Uncle from Normandy
1939  Savage Brigade
1940  President Haudecoeur
1942  Annette and the Blonde Woman
1942  Business Is Business
1943  The Roquevillards
1943  Tornavara
1945  A Cage of Nightingales
1945  Hanged Man's Farm
1945  Les Cadets de l'océan
1946  Tainted
1947  Carbon Copy
1948  Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water
1948  The Spice of Life
1949  Return to Life
1950  The Big Meeting
1952  Das Geheimnis vom Bergsee
1952  The Girl with the Whip
1952  The Seven Deadly Sins
1953  Endless Horizons
1954  Queen Margot
1955  Intermediate Landing in Paris
1957  The Suspects
1958  A Dog, A Mouse and a Sputnik
1958  The Lady and the Gipsy
1960  Normandy - Neman
1962  Lafayette
1965  Nights of Farewell
1966  The Sleeping Sentinel

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Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

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Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

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Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

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Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.