Eugène Lourié
Eugène Lourié, Russian Евгений Лурье / Yevgeny Lurje (. * 26 Märzjul / April 8 1903greg in Kharkov, Russian Empire, . † 26 May 1991, Woodland Hills, CA, USA ) was a Russian -born art director, director and production designer in the French and American cinema.
Life
Lourié had fled as a result of the civil war turmoil in the Soviet Union in 1921 via Istanbul to France. There he received his practical training at a ballet ( ' Ballet Suèdois ') and came still in the silent movie era as a supplier (eg 1925/26, Abel Gance's Napoleon in ) and costume designer (eg 1929 with Richard Oswald Cagliostro ) to the cinema.
With the beginning of the 1930s Lourié began his work as chief architect. Until the outbreak of the Second World War he designed the decorations to some important work of poetic realism and outstanding literary adaptations, including films by Marcel L' Herbier and Max Ophüls, and several masterpieces Jean Renoir ( The Lower Depths, The Great Illusion, Human Beast, The rule of the game ) with which he was able to create both upper-class apocalyptic mood and petty-bourgeois dreariness.
After the occupation of France by the German Wehrmacht Lourié sat, along with Renoir, to the USA, where both successfully continued their cooperation. While Renoir but returned at the start of the 1950s over India in the old home, Lourié remained in the United States. 1952, shortly after completing his work for Charlie Chaplin's spotlight, he was given the opportunity to film directing for the first time. His debut panic in New York was a moderately exciting animal horror film about a prehistoric, thawed in the Arctic dinosaurs, which attacks the largest city in the United States. The finale at the fairground at Coney Iceland is part of the (often copied in variations) highlight of this production.
The success of panic in New York, who founded mainly on the considerable Rhedosaurus creation of Fantasy Figures - tinkerer Ray Harryhausen, put a worldwide and especially in Japan by the subsequent Godzilla films popular film shaft about prehistoric monsters in motion. Lourié subsequently received in the late 1950s in England more offers to work as a director in the horror film genre.
In the early 1960s he returned to the film architecture, since the early 1970s, he designed especially for the scenes of American television productions, including the popular series Kung Fu. In 1970, he was together with Alex Weldon for the Oscar for best visual effects in the adventure story Krakatoa - nominated The greatest adventure of the last century. After his Filmbauten to Clint Eastwood's Bronco Billy Action Comedy is largely Lourié pulled back from the film business. Almost 80 -year-old graduated from Eugène Lourié an appearance in Richard Gere thriller Breathless. In 1985, his autobiography under the title My Work in Films.