Reichenbach, Francois-Arnold

▪ 1994

      French filmmaker (b. July 3, 1921, Paris, France—d. Feb. 2, 1993, Neuilly, near Paris), wrote, directed, and photographed a wide range of documentary motion pictures, notably the Academy Award-winning Arthur Rubinstein, l'amour de la vie (1969). Reichenbach worked as a songwriter in Paris and as an art dealer in the U.S. He acquired a 16-mm camera in 1953; two years later he released his first short documentary, Impressions de New York, which took a special prize at the Festival of Tours in 1956. Other films followed, including Visages de Paris (1955), Les Marines (1957), and La Douceur du village (1963), which won a grand prize at the 1964 Cannes film festival. His first feature-length documentary, L'Amérique insolite (1960; America Through the Keyhole), won an award at Cannes in 1960 and established his international reputation. Reichenbach was particularly known for his cinema verité portraits of public individuals such as John F. Kennedy, Brigitte Bardot, Yehudi Menuhin, and Herbert von Karajan. In equally impressive films, however, he explored the lives of lesser figures, notably in Un Coeur gros comme ça (1961), a day-by-day account of a young Senegalese boxer in Paris, and Houston, Texas (1981), a close examination of the trial and execution of a convicted murderer.

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