AURIC, Georges

Composer. Nationality: French. Born: Lodève, 15 February 1899. Studied at the Paris Conservatory, and under d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum, Paris, 1914–16. Family: Married Nora Smith, 1938. Career: Composer from age 15; member of the group Les Six; 1930—first film score, Le Sang d'un poète; composer of orchestra and choral works, and incidental music for plays; 1965—music for serialized TV work Marc et Sylvie, and for L'Age heureux 1966, Le Trésor des Hollandais, 1969, and Zingari, 1975. Awards: Venice Festival special award, 1952. Died: In Paris, 23 July 1983.

Films as Composer:

1930

Le Sang d'un poète ( The Blood of a Poet) (Cocteau)

1931

À nous la liberté (Clair)

1934

Lac-aux-dames (M. Allégret)

1935

Les Mystères de Paris (Gandera)

1936

Sous les yeux d'Occident (Razumov) (M. Allégret)

1937

L'Affaire Lafarge (Chenal); Un Déjeuner de soleil (Cohen); Gribouille (Heart of Paris) (M. Allégret); Tamara la complaisante (Gandera); Le Messager (Rouleau) (co); La Danseuse rouge (Paulin) (co); L'Alibi (Chenal) (co)

1938

Orage (M. Allégret); Les Oranges de Jaffa (Alexeiff—short); Trois minutes—les saisons (short); La Vie d'un homme (short); Huilor (Alexeiff—short); Entrée des artistes (The Curtain Rises) (M. Allégret); La Rue sans joie (Hugon) (co); Son oncle de Normandie (Dréville)

1939

La Mode rêvée (L'Herbier—short); Macao, l'enfer du jeu (Delannoy); The Alibi

1940

De la ferraille a l'acier victorieux (Lallier—short)

1942

Opéra-Musette (Lefèvre and C. Renoir); L'Assassin a peur la nuit (Delannoy); Monsieur et la souris (Lacombe); La Belle Aventure (Twilight) (M. Allégret)

1943

L'Eternel Retour (The Eternal Return) (Delannoy); Farandole (Zwoboda)

1944

Le Bossu (Delannoy)

1945

François Villon (Zwoboda) (co); Caesar and Cleopatra (Pascal); Dead of Night (Cavalcanti and others); La Part de l'ombre (Blind Desire) (Delannoy)

1946

La Belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast) (Cocteau); La Symphonie pastorale (Delannoy); La Septième Porte (Zwoboda)

1947

Ruy Blas (Billon); Hue and Cry (Crichton); Les Jeux sont faits (The Chips Are Down) (Delannoy); L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle with Two Heads) (Cocteau); Corridor of Mirrors (Young); It Always Rains on Sunday (Hamer); La Rose et le réséda (Michel)

1948

The Queen of Spades (Dickinson); Silent Dust (Comfort); Another Shore (Crichton); Noces du sable (Zwoboda); Les Parents terribles (The Storm Within) (Cocteau); Aux yeux du souvenir (Souvenir) (Zwoboda);

1949

Maya (Bernard); Passport to Pimlico (Cornelius); Ce siècle a cinquante ans (Tual) (co); The Spider and the Fly (Hamer)

1950

Orphée (Orpheus) (Cocteau); Cage of Gold (Dearden); Caroline chérie (Pottier); Fès (Zwoboda—short); Les Amants de Bras-Mort (Pagliero)

1951

Nex de cuir (Y. Allégret); Front de mer (short); Kermesse fantastique (Mishek—short); La P . . . respecteuse (The Respectful Prostitute) (Pagliero and Brabant); La Fête à Henriette (Duvivier); The Open Window (Storck—short); The Titfield Thunderbolt (Crichton); Moulin Rouge (Huston); The Lavender Hill Mob (Crichton)

1953

La Chair et le diable (Josipovici); L'Esclave (Ciampi); La Salaire de la peur ( The Wages of Fear) (Clouzot); Roman Holiday (Wyler)

1954

Chéri Bibi (Pagliero); The Good Die Young (Gilbert); Du Rififi chez les hommes ( Rififi) (Dassin); The Divided Heart (Crichton); Nagana (Bromberger); Abdullah the Great (Abdullah's Harem) (Ratoff); Father Brown (The Detective) (Hamer)

1955

La Femme et la fauve (Sarrut and Asseo—short); La Chaleur du foyer (Feeder de l'est) (Gillet—short); The Bespoke Overcoat (Clayton—short); Lola Montès (Ophüls); Les Hussards (Joffé); Gervaise (Clément); A Visit with Darius Milhaud (Joseph) (+ appearance); Walk into Paradise (Robinson and Pagliero); Licht und der Mensch (Geesink);

1956

Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) (Clouzot); Notre-Dame de Paris (Delannoy); Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (Huston); Les Aventures de Till l'Espiègle (Philipe)

1957

Celui qui doit mourir (He Who Must Die) (Dassin); Bonjour Tristesse (Preminger); Les Espions (Clouzot); The Story of Esther Costello (Miller); Walk into Hell

1958

Next to No Time (Cornelius); Dangerous Exile (Hurst); Les Bijoutiers du clair de lune (Heaven Fell That Night) (Vadim); Christine (Gaspard-Huit)

1959

The Journey (Litvak); La Princesse de Clèves (Delannoy); Sergent X . . . (Borderie); S.O.S. Pacific (Green)

1960

Le Testament d'Orphée (The Testament of Orpheus) (Cocteau); Schlüssakkord (Liebeneiner)

1961

Aimez-vous Brahms? (Goodbye Again) (Litvak); Bridge to the Sun (Perier); The Innocents (Clayton); Les Croulants se portent bien (Boyer); Le Rendez-vous de minuit (Leenhardt)

1962

La Chambre ardente (The Burning Court) (Duvivier); Smash en direct (Dasque and Abadie—short) (co): Carillons sans joie (Brabant)

1963

The Kremlin (Vicas); The Mind Benders (Dearden)

1964

Thomas l'imposteur (Franju)

1965

La Sentinelle endormie (Dreville); La Communale (L'Hote)

1966

La Grande Vadrouille (Oury); Danger Grows Wild (The Poppy Is Also a Flower) (Young)

1968

Thérèse and Isabelle (Metzger); Ce pays dont les frontières ne sont que fleurs (Masson—short)

1969

The Christmas Tree (Young)

Other Films:

1924

Entr'acte (Clair—short) (ro)

1941

Les Petits Riens (Leboursier) (mus d)

Publications

By AURIC: autobiography—

Quand j'étais là, Paris, 1979.

By AURIC: articles—

Mein Film (Vienna), 22 August 1952.

Unifrance Film (Paris), no. 50, 1959.

Ecran Fantastique (Paris), no. 5, 1978.

On AURIC: books—

Schaeffner, A., Georges Auric, Paris, 1928.

Golea, A., Georges Auric, Paris, 1958.

On AURIC: articles—

Sight and Sound (London), April-June 1953.

Fistful of Soundtracks (London), October 1980.

Obituary, in Revue du Cinéma (Paris), no. 386, September 1983.

New Zealand Film Music Bulletin (Invercargill), November 1983.

The Annual Obituary 1983, Chicago and London, 1984.

Composer of some of the most delightfully whimsical motion picture scores in history, Georges Auric also had the added distinction of having written the first original score for a feature film: his music for Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet (1930). Auric's quirky classicism is displayed in more than 75 scores from 1930 to 1969. He never lost sight of his own artistic vision, no matter the assignment he was given, and his screen music is shot through with echoes of Durey, Tailleferre, Poulenc, Honneger and Milhaud, the other members of "The Group of Six" (Auric was the sixth member). He worked with such major directors as Max Ophüls (Lola Montès), John Huston (Moulin Rouge), William Wyler, Otto Preminger, Jean Delannoy, and his scores range from the highly dramatic (Bonjour Tristesse) to the playful (The Lavender Hill Mob, Passport to Pimlico).

According to Cocteau's biographer, Francis Steegmuller, Auric early on acquired a taste for opium, but apparently never let the drug get the better of him, becoming what Steegmuller described as a "controlled, habitual smoker." He probably acquired his predilection for the drug from Cocteau, who was widely known to use opiates for relaxation and "brainstorming," and it is perhaps not too farfetched to claim that a certain "twinkling etherealness" in Auric's music may be attributable to his use of the drug. Auric's best scores, including The Blood of a Poet, A nous la liberté, Beauty and the Beast, The Eternal Return, Dead of Night, Rififi, and The Lavender Hill Mob, all have a certain "celestial accent" (Cocteau's words) which makes them simultaneously fanciful and yet never too far removed from the mundane realities they must inevitably remain grounded in.

Almost alone among those composers who work specifically for films, Auric had a classical background which led him to create scores which stand quite well on their own as concert pieces, and interestingly, Auric's few detractors claim that at times his music forgets its supporting role and threatens to overpower the images it is supposed to accompany. Perhaps this explains why he worked so well, and so often, with Cocteau, whose visual style is boldly, even aggressively romantic. Cocteau's full blown imagery coupled with Auric's lush, yet light music meshed perfectly to create a fantastic world of full-blooded fantasy, a world at once more real and tangible than that of one's everyday existence.

Auric picked his assignments with great care, particularly after he became director of the Paris Opera in 1962. Although he won numerous prizes for his work at the Venice and Cannes Film Festivals, and elsewhere, Auric was always more interested in working on "difficult" or "experimental" projects than mainstream films. For example, one of his last films, The Mind Benders, directed by Basil Dearden, is a prescient tale of psychological research done by a group of university professors who subject themselves to long periods of sensory deprivation in "isolation tanks." That the film was ahead of its time is amply demonstrated by the fact that it was still considered a radical enough concept to be remade by Ken Russell in his uneven Altered States. Auric also worked on Cocteau's last project, The Testament of Orpheus, which, although arguably the least of Cocteau's efforts, is still an admirably evocative conclusion to the artist's illustrious multifaceted career. It is perhaps the highest possible tribute to Auric's work to say that his film scores are instantly recognizable, sincerely romantic, and, like the film scores of his fellow countryman George Delerue, glorious throwbacks to an earlier age of gentility, precision, and grace.

—Wheeler Winston Dixon

Auric, Georges (b Lodève, Hérault, Fr., 1899; d Paris, 1983). Fr. composer. Youngest member of Les Six. Wrote for Diaghilev ballet in 1920s and worked as mus. critic. Gen. admin., Paris Opéra and Opéra-Comique 1962–8. Works incl. operas, ballets (notably Les Matelots, 1925), film mus., orch. works, pf. sonata, songs, etc.