Biography
Jacques Feyder was a Belgian actor, screenwriter, and film director who primarily worked in France, but also in the USA, Britain, and Germany. He was a prominent director of silent films in the 1920s and became associated with poetic realism in French cinema during the 1930s. He acquired French nationality in 1928.
Born Jacques Léon Louis Frédérix in Ixelles, Belgium, he moved to Paris at age twenty-five to pursue acting, first on stage and then in film, adopting the name Jacques Feyder. He joined the Gaumont Film Company and became an assistant director to Gaston Ravel in 1914. He began directing films for Gaumont in 1916, though his career was interrupted by military service in the Belgian army from 1917 to 1919.
After World War I, Feyder resumed filmmaking and quickly gained a reputation as one of French cinema’s most innovative directors. His early notable films included L'Atlantide (1921), adapted from Pierre Benoit’s novel, and Crainquebille (1922), based on Anatole France’s work. He also wrote screenplays for other directors. His final silent film in France, Les Nouveaux Messieurs, was a political satire that faced calls for banning due to its perceived insult to the dignity of parliament and ministers.
Feyder accepted an offer from MGM and moved to Hollywood, where in 1929 he directed Greta Garbo in The Kiss, her last silent film. It was in Hollywood that he transitioned to sound films, having expressed strong belief in their future ahead of many French contemporaries.
Disenchanted with Hollywood, Feyder returned to France in 1933. Over the next three years, he made three of his most acclaimed films, all in collaboration with screenwriter Charles Spaak and starring Françoise Rosay. Le Grand Jeu (1934) and Pension Mimosas (1935) were key examples of poetic realism, while La Kermesse héroïque (1935), also known as Carnival in Flanders, was a carefully crafted period piece with political undertones that earned him international recognition.
Before World War II, Feyder also directed films in England and Germany. After the Nazi occupation in 1940, which led to the banning of La Kermesse héroïque, he fled to Switzerland, where he directed his final film, Une femme disparaît (1942).
In 1917, Feyder married Paris-born actress Françoise Rosay (1891–1974). They had three sons, and she appeared in many of his films, also collaborating as a writer and assistant director on Visages d'enfants.
Jacques Feyder passed away in 1948 in Prangins, Switzerland. In 1977, a high school (lycée) in Épinay-sur-Seine, north of Paris, was named in his honor; Épinay was home to the Tobis studios where he made Le Grand Jeu and Pension Mimosas.
