Alexandre Trauner

Renowned, influential art director, a key figure of the French "poetic realism" movement which began in the mid-1930s. Trauner apprenticed under Lazare Meerson and worked with director Rene Clair on his famous early sound musical comedies, notably the satire of industrialization in the city, "A Nous la Liberte" (1931). Trauner espoused a studio-bound aesthetic, producing textured, finely detailed sets which subtly highlighted both the naturalism and the claustrophobic, indeed existential, pessimism of such Marcel Carne classics of poetic realism as "Quai des brumes" (1938) and "Le Jour se leve/Daybreak" (1939).