Henri Decaë

Who was Henri Decaë?

Henri Decaë gained fame as a cinematographer entering the film industry as a sound engineer and sound editor. He was a photojournalist in the French army during World War II. After the war he began making documentary shorts, directing and photographing industrial and commercial films. In 1947 he made his first feature film.

Decaë is strongly associated with directors who strongly influenced, or were part of, the French New Wave. These include Jean-Pierre Melville, Louis Malle and Claude Chabrol. Decaë first worked as a cinematographer with Melville on Le Silence de la Mer. Decaë also edited and mixed the sound. Although Decaë worked with Melville on Les enfants terribles, which as Williams commented "...the work is more accurately to be viewed as a stunning demonstration of the cinematic possibilities of faithful literary adaptation in the hands of a gifted director", according to Marie it was his distinctive camera work on Bob le flambeur which caught the attention of the Cahiers critics. Malle hired him for his first two features and Chabrol for his first three features.