Chenal, Pierre

(1904-1990)

   Director. Born Pierre Cohen in Brussels, Belgium, Pierre Chenal, as he would be known in the world of film, showed an early interest in cinema. He made his first film, a documentary titled Petits métiers de Paris (1930), at the age of only twenty-six. He would quickly turn his attention to narrative cinema, making some thirty films over the course of his career.

   Chenal had a penchant and a gift for literary adaptation. Among the literary masterpieces he brought to the screen were La Rue sans nom (1933), based on the novel by Marcel Aymé; Crime et chatîment (1935), based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; and the superb La Maison du Maltais (1938), from the novel by Jean Vignaud. In 1936, he adapted Luigi Pirandello's L'Homme de nulle part for the screen, trumping the earlier silent-film version by the legendary Marcel L'Herbier.

   Chenal was also able to spot a literary and film masterpiece in the making. He was the first director to bring James M. Cain's novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, to the screen in his 1939 film, Le Dernier tournant. In 1950, Chenal also collaborated with American author Richard Wright to bring Wright's highly controversial but acclaimed novel of racial prejudice in America, Native Son, to the screen in an Argentine version titled Sangre negra, the work being still too controversial to be made in an English-language version.

   Chenal made a number of other films in Latin America as well as in France, having spent the war years there. He returned to Latin America from time to time to work, most particularly in Argentina. His Spanish-language films include Confesiones al almancer (1954) and Las Bellas (1969). Of his films in French, apart from those mentioned, he is best known for Clochmerle (1948), Rafles sur la ville (1958), and La Bête à l'affût (1959). He is considered by some critics to have been an overlooked contributor to Le Réalisme poétique or poetic realism.