Georges Lautner

Biography

Georges Lautner (1926-2013) was a French film director and screenwriter, best remembered for the comedies and gangster films he made in France, many written with Michel Audiard. He worked steadily in the French popular cinema of the postwar decades and kept directing into the 1990s.

Born in Nice, he was the son of actress Renée Saint-Cyr and Leopold Lautner, a Viennese jeweller who also flew in air displays and had been a combat pilot in the First World War. In 1933 he moved to Paris with his mother, who was just starting her film career, and it was there that he discovered cinema. His father's death in a plane crash in 1938 clouded those years. Lautner left school and found work at French film studios, learning the trade as an assistant director before he began directing himself.

His directing debut came in 1958 with La Môme aux boutons. His breakthrough was Gangster by Force (Les Tontons flingueurs, 1963), a comedy with lively dialogue that became a touchstone of French humour. He also tried thrillers and action films, with less consistent results outside comedy. His biggest commercial hit was The Professional (1981), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, which was a major success in France.

His filmography is long, with dozens of titles as director and writer, and he moved between cinema and television work. Only two of his films were in English: the 1990 thriller Presumed Dangerous and Road to Salina, whose song was later used by Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill: Volume 2. Today he is remembered as a craftsman of popular French cinema, above all for his gangster comedies and action films.

Key films

• Gangster by Force (1963): he directed and co-wrote this gangster comedy, one of his best-known titles.
• Inspector Joss (1968): a police drama starring Jean Gabin, in the action vein of his work.
• Death of a Corrupt Man (1977): a thriller about corruption, which he directed and co-wrote.
• Cop or Hood (1979): an action film about police and criminals that kept him in demand with French audiences.
• The Professional (1981): his biggest commercial hit, with Jean-Paul Belmondo in the lead.