Richard Pottier

Biography

Richard Pottier (6 June 1906, in Graz – 2 November 1994, in Le Plessis-Bouchard) was an Austrian-born French film director.He was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire as Ernst Deutsch. Pottier, born in 1906 in Budapest, began his career as Sternberg's assistant. His debut as a director coincided with the coming of the talkies. He broached many genres along his long career: plenty of comedies ("Si J'Etais Le Patron" ), adventures ("Les Secrets De La Mer rouge"), sci -fi ("Le Monde Tremblera", with its machine which could predict the date of your death), detective films ("Picpus" ) musicals ("Violettes Imperiales"), melodramas ("Defense D'Aimer" ), you name it. He was a solid craftsman and certainly did not deserve the critics' contempt. Without him, "Some like it hot" would never have happened for Billy Wilder used the German remake of "fanfare D'Amour" as a model. He was the first to talk about euthanasia in "Meurtres" (1950) at a time when the subject was thoroughly taboo; his buoyant "Caroline Chérie" predated the "Angélique Marquise Des Anges" saga by ten years. His rural thriller "La Ferme Aux Loups" renewed the story of twins. His career neatly declined after 1950,and his last works were cheap sword and sandals flicks such as "David Et Goliath" (starring Orson Welles) and "L'Enlèvement Des Sabines" (starring Roger Moore). He retired in the mid-sixties. He was to live thirty more years.(d.1994)