Henri Ménessier

Birth : 1882-10-02, France

Death : 1948-12-31

History

Henri Ménessier was a French production designer, art director, set decorator, and assistant director / director. He died in France in 1948.

Movies

Bethsabée
Production Design
Danielle Darrieux stars as Arabella Delvaire in this baroque adaptation of Pierre Benoit's novel Bethshabee. Arabella is a woman of the world who arrives at a remote Foreign Legion outpost for a rendezvous with her current lover, Captain Duveuil. It so happens that one of Arabella's previous amours, Captain Somerville (Paul Meurisse), is also serving at the same post. So much for joining the Foreign Legion to forget. A climactic knife duel "solves" the film's various plot complications. Despite its Foreign Legion background, Bethsabee has next to no action, which must have made things difficult when the film was distributed to the U.S.
My Last Mistress
Production Design
A renowned sculptor aged about fifty years, François Bressolles falls for the young Catherine Collet whom he convinces without difficulty to pose for him. Complications ensue when he starts to go blind.
Business Is Business
Set Decoration
Isidore Lechat is a ruthless self-made man whose money allows him to humiliate the others, particularly a ruined noble: he wants his daughter to marry this marquis's son but the girl is in love with a young scientist.
The Puritan
Art Direction
A religious fanatic finds his entire life and philosophy turned upside-down as he falls in love with a girl and kills her in a jealous rage. His search is for peace of mind and a desire to justify the murder of the girl to himself. His mind becomes distraught as he gropes trying to rationalize his deed and his world falls apart around him. A police inspector patiently and tirelessly stays on Barrault's trail, without putting him under arrest, though convinced he is the murderer, and waiting for the moment when he feels Barrault will break under the strain of his own religious fanaticism (IMDb).
Ladies Only Compartment
Art Direction
On his wedding day, Robert confesses his father-in-law that twenty years ago, he seduced a lady in a sleeping car of a train. His mother-in-law overhears the conversation and convinces Robert that she was that lady and that makes Robert's bride also his daughter. The wedding is in danger of being annulled when the trickery is finally discovered.
Ladies Only Compartment
Production Design
On his wedding day, Robert confesses his father-in-law that twenty years ago, he seduced a lady in a sleeping car of a train. His mother-in-law overhears the conversation and convinces Robert that she was that lady and that makes Robert's bride also his daughter. The wedding is in danger of being annulled when the trickery is finally discovered.
L'évadée
Director
Woman of Destiny
Production Design
Expressing post-war cultural internationalism, this silent film follows the mysterious Orchid and the man who loves her.
The Magician
Art Direction
A young woman, Margaret Dauncey, is caught between the forces of a charlatan magician, Oliver Haddo, whom she is unable to resist, and the love of a handsome surgeon, Arthur Burdon, who has saved her from being a helpless cripple by performing a delicate operation on her spine.
The Sewer
Writer
A noted philanthropist is captured by a rowdy gang, but one of the children involved resists the gang's insistence that he turn to a life of crime.
Falling Leaves
Set Decoration
It's early autumn and Dr. Headley eagerly demonstrates what seems to be a miraculous cure for tuberculosis. Not far from where he is working, the disease seems preparing to soon claim yet another life, a teenage girl named Winifred. Winifred's mother and little sister Trixie are devastated. When Trixie hears the family doctor say of Winifred that "when the last leaf falls, she will have passed away," she interprets the doctor's words literally. Thinking over what she has heard, she determines to do everything possible to save her sister.
The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ
Production Design
The stations of Christ's life are segmented into a series of performative tableaux.
Esmeralda
Production Design
It was the first film version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.