Edmond T. Gréville
1906 - 1966The son of Franco-British parents, his father a Protestant pastor, Gréville began his career as a film journalist and critic. In parallel with a few acting performances in some silent films and in the first talkie of René Clair, Sous les toits de Paris (1930), he directed his first short films. His first experience of directing had been on the shooting of Abel Gance's Napoléon in 1927. He had then worked as an assistant director, notably on the English film Piccadilly, L'Arlésienne (directed by Jacques de Baroncelli), Augusto Genina's Prix de beauté ( with Louise Brooks) and Abel Gance's La Fin du Monde.
Between 1930 and 1940 he directed several French films - Le Train des suicidés (1931), Remous (1934) with Françoise Rosay (a social-realist film on the sensitive sexual issue of impotence), and two comedy musical films Princesse Tam Tam (1935) with Josephine Baker, and Gypsy Melody (1936), with Lupe Velez. In Britain again, he filmed Mademoiselle Docteur with Dita Parlo and John Loder, and Menaces (1938) with Mireille Balin and Erich von Stroheim, playing an Austrian refugee who commits suicide following the Anschluss. With a heavy atmosphere charged with eroticism which characterises his films, Gréville imposed his independence and original style on the cinema of the time.
He stopped directing films during the Second World War and the Occupation - xenophobia and anti-Semitism ruined or put a stop to some careers, among film-makers those of Léonide Moguy and Pierre Chenal for example, both French Jews, and the half-British Gréville, and took away production and distribution companies belonging to Jews like the father and son distributors Siriztky. In 1948 he made a film on the subject of resistance and collaboration in the Dutch film Niet tevergeefs. The same year he made a film with Carole Landis, Noose. In Le Port du désir (1954) he directed Jean Gabin as a captain confronted by an unscrupulous smuggler and torn by his love for a young woman who is also loved by a younger man.
In Gréville's last years he made Beat Girl (1959) with Adam Faith and a horror film The Hands of Orlac (1960) with Mel Ferrer. His last film was L'Accident (1963) with Magali Noël based on a Frédéric David novel.
In May 1966, Edmond Greville died in hospital in Nice, thought to be the result of complications following a car accident.
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Marchand d'amour
Edmond T. Gréville
Jean Galland, Rosine Deréan
A genius director whose daring and sensual films have earned him the nickname "The Merchant of Love", claims to escape commercial contingencies and direct the film of his life on his own. It is a resounding failure that leads him to the forfeiture from which the fate of a woman's love.
Marchand d'amour
Veertig Jaren
Edmond T. Gréville, Johan De Meester
Cees Laseur, Lily Bouwmeester
This government commissioned film -- made on the occasion of the forty year anniversary of queen Wilhelmina's reign -- chronicles the lives of two Dutch families from 1898 to 1938 against the backdrop of the social and political events of the times. It shows the emergence of trade unions, the troubled years of the First World War, the development of aviation and Schiphol airport, the Dutch East Indies and the lives of the Dutch royal family.
Forty Years
Remous
Edmond T. Gréville
Jeanne Boitel, Jean Galland
The happiness of a newly-married couple, Henry and Jeannie Saint Clair, is shattered when the husband is made a paralytic in an automobile accident. The wife still loves him, although he is incapable of any physical love. She is slowly drawn into a short-lived affair with a handsome athlete, Robert Vanier. When the husband learns of the affair, he commits suicide. But the wife cannot forget him and she sends her lover away.
Whirlpool
Sous les toits de Paris
René Clair
Albert Préjean, Pola Illéry
In the tenement slums of Paris between the world wars, impoverished street singer Albert yearns for beautiful Romanian immigrant Pola. Pola's boyfriend, local hoodlum Fred, grows jealous of Albert's constant attention to his woman and frames the hapless musician for one of his own petty crimes. But while Albert is in prison for Fred's misdeed, Pola ends up falling for Albert's faithful best friend, Louis.
Under the Roofs of Paris
L'île du bout du monde
Edmond T. Gréville
Magali Noël, Dawn Addams
When a ship bringing a contingent of international wounded from Korea is torpedoed, three women (two nurses and a secretary) and a male journalist survive and reach a lonely island in a boat. Soon desire erupts among them, but jealousy, lust and madness lead the events to tragedy.
Temptation
L'accident
Edmond T. Gréville
Magali Noël, Georges Rivière
A young beautiful teacher is transfered to a remote island's school, where her colleague (also the principal of the school) falls in love with her. This banned love provokes the jealousy of the principal's wife and makes her seek revenge.
The Accident
L'envers du Paradis
Edmond T. Gréville
Jacques Sernas, Etchika Choureau
Set in a tiny village near the Riviera, the story concerns a diverse group of has-beens and losers.The Countess (played by Denise Vernac,Von Stroheim's secretary and constant companion in real life) entertains her jaded guests by screening dirty movies. Failed writer Blaise (Jacques Sernas) is saddled with an alcoholic wife (Dora Doll). And idealistic young Violaine (Etchika Choureau) is slowly dying of tuberculosis. The lives of all these people become intertwined through a sudden -- but not unexpected -- act of violence.
Other Side of Paradise
Noose
Edmond T. Gréville
Carole Landis, Derek Farr
Set in post Second World War Britain, Noose is the story of black market racketeers who face attempts to bring them to justice by an American fashion journalist, her ex-army fiancée and a gang of honest toughs from a local gym. When a corpse turns up at black market front The Blue Moon Club, Yank reporter Carole Landis starts snooping, much to gang boss Joseph Calleia’s annoyance. And soon there’s a hit man on the way...
Noose
