From the same humanist family as Brassaï with whom he joined the Rapho photo agency from its creation by Charles Rado in 1933, then in the company of Willy Ronis, Robert Doisneau who joined them after the war when Raymond Grosset revived it in 1945, Émile Savitry , longtime friend of Jacques and Pierre Prévert, was sensitive to the poetic realism of the cinema of Marcel Carné, of Jean Grémillon. He was a still photographer for “Lumière d’été” by Jean Grémillon in 1942, “Portes de la nuit” in 1946 and “La Fleur de l’âge” in 1947 by Marcel Carné; the screenplay for the three films is by Jacques Prévert.
Story of thwarted love against the backdrop of a penal colony for children and tragic escape, the incredible series of photographs taken on the set of “La Fleur de l’âge” constitutes, to date, the only visual testimony of this cursed film shot in Belle-Île-en-Mer and interrupted after three months. The reels having disappeared. The poster was prestigious. It brought together Arletty, back to the cinema after two years of being banned after the war, Serge Reggiani embodying a young rebel of the penitentiary, the very young Anouk who received her name – Aimée -from Prévert because everyone loved her , Paul Meurisse as a ruthless guardian of the penitentiary, Carette one of the key figure of the Prévert gang, Martine Carol… The photos of Savitry tell the moving adventure of a film that we will never see and reveals the concerns of the director facing the challenge of a shooting in a natural setting, him used to the sets of Alexandre Trauner reconstituted in the studio.
Sophie Malexis
Exhibition curator
Exhibition “Emile Savitry, a photographer from Montparnasse (1903-1967)
produced under the direction of Brigitte Richart, curator of the Granville museums
Richard-Anacréon Museum of Modern Art
Place de l’isthme- 50400 -Granville. Phone 02.33.51.02.94.
Open Friday, Saturday, Sunday until the end of June from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. and from July 1 to September 30 from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
