Akademik

(1856-1922)

   Actor, director, film pioneer, and screenwriter. Like many film pioneers, Henri Pouctal began his career in the theater. He worked as an actor principally before being hired on at Studio Film d'art in 1908. In the beginning, Pouctal worked as both an actor and director. He acted in such films as André Calmettes and Henri Desfontaines's Résurrection (1910) and Jésus de Nazareth (1911) and Calmettes's L'Écharpe (1910), Le Chevalier d'Essex (1911), and La Dame aux Camélias (1912). Pouctal codirected the two later films.

   Pouctal began directing in 1910, and by 1912 had devoted himself entirely to directing. He went on to make more than seventy films over a period of approximately ten years. Among films he directed are Vitellius (1911), Werther (1911), Madame Sans-Gêne (1911), Camille Desmoulins (1911), and Les Trois mousquetaires (1912), the last two codirected with Calmettes, Le Saltimbanque (1912), Blanchette (1912), Le Trait d'union (1913), which stars Jacques Feyder, Frères ennemis (1913), Colette (1913), La Rose rouge (1914), Le Légionnaire (1914), L'Heure tragique (1914), Pêcheur d'islande (1915), L'Homme masqué (1916), Chantecoq (1916), Debout les morts! (1916), Le Roman d'un spahi (1917), the eight-part serial Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1918), Travail (1920), and Gigolette (1921). As may be expected from his film d'art connections, Pouctal worked predominantly with literary adaptation, although he did other types of film. Pouctal worked with actors such as Léon Mathot and Camille Bert and was once hailed as one of the great directors of silent film by Louis Delluc.