French film director Jean Delannoy died 18 June 2008 at his home in Guainville, west of Paris. Born 12 January 1908 in Île-de-France, he won the Palme d’Or, the top prize, at the Cannes Film Festival for his 1946 film La Symphonie Pastorale. Delannoy began his career as an actor in the 1920s, switched to editing in the 1930s, and by the end of the decade, was directing.
The New York Times lists some of his notable films as Pontcarral, Colonel d’Empire (1942), which was a call to the Resistance during the Nazi occuptation; Maigret Tend un Piège (1958, Maigret Lays a Trap) starring Jean Gabin as Georges Simenon’s police hero; and La Princesse de Clèves (1961), a historical drama. His last film, Marie de Nazareth, appeared in 1995.
Delannoy’s genre films include Les Jeux sont Faits (1947, The Chips are Down, a romantic fantasy about the afterlife, which he also wrote) and Notre Dame de Paris (1956, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, sarring Anthony Quinn and Gina Lollobrigida).
Delannoy was made an officer of the Legion of Honor, a Commander of Arts and Letters, and a Commander of the National Order of Merit. He received an honorary César (the French version of the Oscar) in 1986. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said of Delannoy, “he was a huge director [who] contributed to our country’s cultural influence.”