Richard Pottier Biography
Richard Pottier was born on June 27, 1906 in Budapest, Hungary. At the beginning of his career, he worked as an assistant for the famous director Josef von Sternberg. In 1931 he made his debut as a director with the sound film "Une Fois Dans La Vie". Over the course of his long career, which spanned from 1931 to 1964, Pottier directed films in a variety of genres, including comedies, adventures, science fiction, detective films, musicals, melodramas and more.
Among his most famous works are "Si J'Etais Le Patron" (1934), "Les Secrets De La Mer Rouge" (1942), "Le Monde Tremblera" (1957) - a science fiction film which also includes the invention of a machine capable of predicting the date of death of people - , "Picpus" (1943), "Violettes Imperiales" (1952), "Defense D'Aimer" (1948) and many more.
Pottier is considered a solid craftsman and his works have always been highly appreciated by the public, although critics have often expressed conflicting opinions on his career. Despite this, the director left his mark in the world of French cinema, above all thanks to his courage in dealing with issues that were considered taboo for the era in which he lived.
An example of this is the film "Meurtres" (1950), in which Pottier was one of the first directors to talk about euthanasia. Another success of the director was "Caroline Chérie" (1951), which anticipated by about ten years the saga of "Angélique Marquise des Anges" by the writer Anne and Serge Golon, and which was one of the first films to address the theme of emancipation female.
Despite his great creativity, Pottier's career began to decline starting in the 1950s. His last works were low-budget swords-and-sandals films, such as "David Et Goliath" (1960) starring Orson Welles and "L'Enlèvement Des Sabines" (1961) with Roger Moore. Pottier retired from the stage in 1964 and passed away on January 2, 1994.
