ABOUT THE PROJECT
LOGLINE
Ben Carré was called "The first true artist of American film." Born before film existed it was his destiny to define Art Direction for the silent cinema.
SYNOPSIS
Born in Paris, France, in 1883, filmmaker and historian, Kevin Brownlow has said that "Ben Carré was one of the most imaginative Art Directors in early silents."
Carré was trained as a Scenic Artist in Paris and was hired by Alice Guy Blaché for the Gaumont Film Company's first art department in1906. At this time Paris was the center for motion picture production, until its dominance was challenged in a place called Fort Lee, New Jersey. This sleepy village was now becoming the backlot for Manhattan's start-up picture companies. Carré was part of the vanguard of pioneer French film artisans arriving at Fort Lee in 1911.
Collaborating with French director, Maurice Tourneur, Ben's approach to art direction influenced and altered the creative course of silent-films and the cinema in America. Carré went on to make with Tourneur 32-feature length pictures, creating classics such as "Trilby" (1915), Mary Pickford's "A Poor Little Rich Girl" (1917), and "The Blue Bird" (1918).
Arriving in Hollywood in 1919, Carré made some of that period's finest silent films, Lon Chaney's "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925) John Barrymore's, "Don Juan" (1926), Cecil B. DeMille's, "King of Kings"(1927), and the picture that ended the silent film era, "The Jazz Singer"(1927).
After 31-years and art directing hundreds of silent films, Carré returned to his first love, the art of painting backdrops at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. For his next 31-years he lead in the creation of scenic masterpieces for many of MGM's finest pictures including, "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), "An American in Paris" (1951), and "North by Northwest" (1959).
Ben Carré's untold story is that of a man who designed and painted our dreams. The history and origin of Art Direction, now called Production Design, for the cinema has never been extensively documented. The stories behind the making of the great silent classics are being lost. We are now in a race against time to capture the voices and memories of the historians and knowledge-keepers who knew this first generation and the voices of our pioneer filmmakers.
Ben Carré a Parisian in Hollywood will be be based on Carré's 400-page unpublished memoir, "Reminiscences of My Years as a Motion Picture Art Director." Leading silent-film scholars, authors, and historians, Kevin Brownlow, Laurent Mannonoi of La Cinemathéque francaise, Dr.Richard Koszarski of the Barrymore Film Center, and Marc Wanamker of Bison Archives among others will share their deep knowledge on-screen about the world of the cinema as it was in Paris, Fort Lee, and Hollywood.
PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature / Film Essay
DIRECTOR Thomas A. Walsh
PRODUCER Thomas A. Walsh
CO-PRODUCER Mark Morris, Merrily Murray-Walsh
WEBSITE bencarre.com
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