Kast, Pierre

(1920-1984)

   Director, film critic, and screenwriter. After fighting in the French Resistance during World War II, Pierre Kast established the Paris University ciné-club in 1945. He also worked for the Cinémathèque française and wrote essays for Cahiers du cinéma. In the late 1940s, he worked as an assistant director to Jean Grémillon. He also assisted Jean Renoir on the film French Cancan (1955).

   Kast's own directorial debut came in 1949, with the film Charmes de l'existence (1949), codirected with Grémillon. Kast went on to make a number of other documentaries on his own, including Arithmétique (1951), Les Femmes du Louvre (1951), Je sème à tout vent (1952), L'architecte maudit: Claude-Nicholas Ledoux (1954), and Le Corbusier, l'architecte du bonheur (1957).

   In the late 1950s, Kast began directing feature-length films. His feature debut, Un Amour de poche (1957), reflected Kast's interest in science fiction. His next film, the intellectual Le Bel Age (1960), was cowritten with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, a cofounder of Cahiers du cinéma. Kast's portrayals of intellectuals in La morte-saison des amours (1961), Vacances portugaises (1963), and Le soleil en face (1978) have received accolades from arguably elite critics and mixed reviews from popular audiences. His continued passion for science fiction emerged in Les soleils de l'Ile de Pâques (1972). He also di-rected Un animal doué de déraison (1976) and La guérilléra (1982).

   In addition to directing, Kast has also worked as a screenwriter. He wrote the screenplays to his own films, as well as those of Jean-Daniel Pollet's Une balle au Coeur (1965) and Le Maître du temps (1970) and Edouard Molinaro's L'Ironie du sort (1974). He also did some short stints as an actor, appearing in an uncredited role in Molinaro's La Mort de Belle (1961) and another in Claude Lelouch's L'Aventure c'est l'aventure (1972). Kast was also known as a novelist, and as such was the author of three novels.

   Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins