Legendary French producer Alain Poiré had a film career that spanned 60 years and around 250 films. His first stint in the film world was in 1938, when the young former law student joined the Societe Nouvelle des Estalissements Gaumont, a group started to restructure and save the financially floundering Gaumont studio. For three years, he was in charge of the distribution and exhibition of Gaumont films. Then, in 1941, a new production unit was established and Poiré was designated its head. His first assignment was Le Journal Tombe a Cinq Heures in 1942, and it would be another six years before he would produce another, the 1948 film Les Casse-Pieds. These six years would prove to be the biggest inactive gap in his cinematic career, which later included collaborations with Roberto Rossellini and Robert Bresson in the 1950s.
Poiré was never a big supporter of the New Wave cinema that swept through France in the 1960s and 1970s, and was often in disagreement with many of his contemporaries. He nonetheless continued doing what he excelled at, creating popular and successful movies. Often, it was his films that enabled Gaumont to continue financing other groundbreaking, but less lucrative, outings. Alain Poiré has been credited with introducing actor Sophie Marceau to the world, as well as working with a crop of fresh and talented directors such as Francis Veber and Jean-Jacques Annand.
Father to director Jean-Marie Poiré, the father/son duo brought Les Visiteurs and Les Couloirs Du Temps -- Les Visiteurs II to the big screen only a couple of years before the elder's death in January 2000, at age 82.
