Biography

René Plaissetty (1889–1955) was an American film director.

Son of Achille Plaissetty, chemist and businessman and Corinne Bonnecaze, professor of singing, René Plaissetty was born on March 7, 1889, in Chicago.

In 1907 he came to live in France and later married Yvonne Lacroix, the daughter of Parisian couturier Jeanne Margaine-Lacroix and a French figure skating champion in 1908, with two daughters, Jacqueline in 1909 and Micheline in 1911. With the help of other administrators he founded his production company Filma.

In January 1920, leaving his factory to his assistant, he left for London where he returned to the studios with Mary Massart, who became his muse. His English feature films of 1920 and 1921 made for the Stoll Film Co are noticed by critics for their aesthetic and thematic qualities such as the strange Yellow Claw, according to a story by Sax Rohmer.

In 1922, he returned to Paris and turned to Gaumont (in the series Pax) My little boy with Leontine Massart, sister of Mary. Still with the same producer, with Mary Massart, he staged an adaptation of Maurice Level's novel L'Île sans nom. This eventful film (one sees in particular a shipwreck) receives a very favorable public and critical reception, due to the originality of the subject and the dramatic use of a new mode of communication, the Wireless telegraphy.

In 1923 René Plaissetty considered American cinema more suited to his projects. He then returned to the United States with Mary Massart to marry in Los Angeles (they will have a son, Francis Léo) and met the director and producer Edwin Carewe. He immediately proposed the adaptation of a novel by Louise Gérard to A Son of the Sahara published in 1922 in New York City.

In 1943, he made an appearance as an actor in the film Mission to Moscow, where he played Robert Coulondre, French ambassador to Berlin at the beginning of the war under the pseudonym Alex Caze.

René Plaissetty died on January 4, 1955, in Los Angeles. He is buried in the Montebello Cemetery in California.