“Quite simply, the ancestor of the New Wave”: That’s how director and former
Cahiers du cinéma critic Paul Vecchiali described French director Louis Valray, who “shot outdoors, produced and edited his films himself,” years before the likes of François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard made their names while doing the same.
You say you’ve never heard of Valray? That’s not surprising. He made two full-length features “La Belle de Nuit” in 1934 and “Escale” in 1935 and, after a stint in radio, essentially disappeared. Valray made his movies with low budgets and like the New Wave auteurs, used that to spur creativity. Unlike the New Wave, Valray’s box office results were unimpressive, and good reviews didn’t help. When Vecchiali was investigating Valray for a book about 1930s French cinema, all he could find was that the former filmmaker worked for the Péchiney SA aluminum conglomerate after the war and died in 1972. Asked why Valray and others have been forgot