Luc Besson ( ; born 18 March 1959) is a French
film director, writer and
producer. He is the creator of
EuropaCorp film company. He has been involved
with over
50 films, spanning
26 years, as writer, director, and/or producer, including the
Transporter series.
Early life
Besson was born in Paris to parents who were both
Club Med scuba diving
instructors. This had a profound influence on his childhood as
Besson planned on becoming a marine biologist. He spent much of his
youth traveling with his parents to tourist resorts in Italy,
Yugoslavia and Greece. The family returned to France when Besson
was 10 years old. His parents promptly divorced and were remarried
to other people. "Here there is two families, and I am the only bad
souvenir of something that doesn't work", he said in the
International Herald Tribune. "And if I disappear, then
everything is perfect. The rage to exist comes from here. I have to
do something! Otherwise I am going to die."
At the age of 17 he had a diving accident which left him unable to
dive. However, he has since fully recovered.
"I was 17 and I wondered what I was going to do. ... So I took a
piece of paper and on the left I put everything I could do, or had
skills for, and all the things I couldn't do. The first line was
shorter and I could see that I loved writing, I loved images, I was
taking a lot of pictures. So I thought maybe movies would be good.
But I thought that to really know I should go to a set. And a
friend of mine knew a guy whose brother was a third assistant on a
short film. It's true", he said in a 2000 interview with
The
Guardian.
Luc Besson interviewed by Richard Jobson | |
guardian.co.uk Film<<></<>a>
"So, I said: 'OK, let's go on the set.' So I went on the set ...
The day after I went back to see my mum and told her that I was
going to make films and stop school and 'bye. And I did it! Very
soon after I made a short film and it was very, very bad. I wanted
to prove that I could do something, so I made a short film. That
was in fact my main concern, to be able to show that I could do
one."
Out of boredom, he started to write stories,
including the backdrop to what would later become one of his most
popular movies, The Fifth Element. Besson directed and
co-wrote the screenplay of this Sci-Fi thriller with the
screenwriter, Robert Mark
Kamen. The film is inspired by the French comic books Besson
read as a teenager. He also reportedly worked on the first drafts
of
Le Grand Bleu while still in his
teens.
At 18, Besson returned to his birthplace of Paris. There he started
to become involved in film, taking on odd jobs to get a feel for
the industry. He worked as an assistant to directors including
Claude Faraldo and Patrick Grandperret. Besson also directed three
short films, a commissioned documentary, and several
commercials.
After this, he moved to the United States for three years, but
returned to form his own production company which he called "Les
Films du Loup". The name was later changed to "Les Films du
Dauphin".In the early 1980s, Besson met
Éric Serra and asked him to compose the
score for his first short film,
L'Avant dernier.
In recent years, he has written and produced numerous action
movies, including the
Taxi and
The Transporter series, and
the
Jet Li films
Kiss of the Dragon and
Unleashed/Danny the Dog.
Besson was also in
charge of the promotional movie which was presented to the IOC
members for the bid of Paris for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Luc had been nominated for Best Director and Best Picture
César Awards for his films
Léon (a.k.a.
The
Professional) and
The Messenger: The Story
of Joan of Arc, but won Best Director and Best French
Director for his film
The Fifth
Element.
Cinéma du look
Critics cite Besson as being a pivotal figure in the
Cinéma du look movement, a specific style of
film being made in the decade of the '80s into the early 1990s.
Subway,
The Big Blue and
Nikita are all considered to be of this
stylistic school. The term was coined in a 1989 essay in
La
Revue du cinema in which Besson was lumped with two other
directors who shared "le look." These directors were said to favor
style over substance, spectacle over narrative.
Most of the filmmakers in the category, including Besson, squirmed
uncomfortably at being labeled, particularly in light of their
forebears: France's New Wave. "
Jean-Luc
Godard and
François
Truffaut were rebelling against existing cultural values and
used cinema as a means of expression simply because it was the most
avant-garde medium at the time", said Besson in
The New York
Times. "Today, the revolution is occurring entirely within the
industry and is led by people who want to change the look of movies
by making them better, more convincing and pleasurable to
watch.
"Because it's becoming increasingly difficult to break into this
field, we have developed a psychological armor and are ready to do
anything in order to work", he added in this same interview. "I
think our ardor alone is going to shake the pillars of the
moviemaking establishment."
Works
Many of Besson's films have achieved popular, if not critical
success. One such film was
Le Grand
Bleu. "When the film had its premiere on opening night at the
1988 Cannes Film Festival,
it was mercilessly drubbed, but no matter; it was a smash",
observed the
International Herald Tribune in a 2007
profile of Besson. "Embraced by young people who kept returning to
see it again, the movie sold 10 million tickets and quickly
became what the French call a film générationnel, a defining moment
in the culture."
Besson created the Arthur trilogy, which comprises
Arthur and the Minimoys,
Arthur and the Forbidden City and
Arthur and the
Revenge of Malthazard. Besson directed
Arthur and the Invisibles, an
adaptation of the first two parts of the trilogy. A part
live-action, part-computer-generated animated film, it was released
in the UK and the USA and starred
Freddie Highmore,
Madonna,
Snoop
Dogg,
Mia Farrow,
Robert De Niro and
David Bowie.
Critical evaluation
American film critic
Armond White has
praised Besson, for whom he claims is one of the best film
producers, for refining and revolutionizing action film, also
stating that Besson dramatizes the struggle of his characters "as a
conscientious resistance to human degradation", unlike films of
torture-porn genre.
Personal life
Besson was married to
Anne Parillaud,
who starred in
Nikita, a film he
wrote and directed. They have one daughter. He later dated model
Maïwenn Le Besco. Their
daughter, Shana Besson, was born in 1993. Besson married
Milla Jovovich on 14 December 1997, but they
divorced in 1999. On 28 August 2004, Besson married Virginie Silla,
a film producer.
He has a total of four daughters : Juliette, Shana, Talia, Satine,
and one son, Mao. The fifth child was born in 2005.
Filmography
- See Luc Besson
filmography
Awards
Among Besson's many awards are the Brussels International Festival
of Fantasy Film Critics Prize, Fantasporto Audience Jury
Award-Special Mention, Best Director, and Best Film, for
Le
Dernier Combat in 1983; The Italian National Syndicate of Film
Journalists Silver Ribbon-Best Director-Foreign Film, for
La
Femme Nikita, 1990; the
Alexander
Korda Award for Best British Film,
Nil by Mouth, 1997;
and the Best Director Cesar Award, for
The Fifth Element,
1997.
Videoclips
References
- "Luc Besson", Contemporary Authors Online, Gale,
2008.
- Luc Besson: The most Hollywood of French filmmakers -
International Herald Tribune
- Luc Besson interviewed by Richard Jobson | |
guardian.co.uk Film
- EuroScreenwriters - Interviews with European Film
Directors - Luc Besson
- "Luc Besson." International Dictionary of Films and
Filmmakers, Volume 2: Directors, 4th ed. St. James Press,
2000.
- Elley, Derek. "Pop pic auteur", Variety, 23 June 1997
v. 367 n. 8 pp. 44–45.
- Austin, Guy. Contemporary French Cinema: An
Introduction, Manchester University Press, 1999, pp. 119–120,
126-128. ISBN 0719046114
- Tremblay, Anne. "France Breeds a New Crop of Auteurs", The
New York Times, 21 July 1985.
- Luc Besson: The most Hollywood of French filmmakers -
International Herald Tribune
- White, Armond (28 January 2009). "We Need New Heroes: Taken" at
New York
Press. Retrieved on 1 February 2009.
- "BESSON BECOMES A FATHER FOR THE FIFTH TIME", World
Entertainment News Network, 29 September 2005.
External links