Jean Wiener

Jean Wiener

Birth : 1896-03-19, Paris, France

Death : 1982-06-08

History

Jean Wiener (or Wiéner) (19 March 1896, 14th arrondissement of Paris – 8 June 1982, Paris) was a French pianist and composer. Wiener was trained at the Conservatoire de Paris, where he studied alongside Darius Milhaud, and worked with Erik Satie. He then embarked on a career as concert impresario, composer and pianist. He was the house pianist at the Gaya bar, and later at Le Boeuf sur le Toit. In 1924, a chance encounter with Clement Doucet (who succeeded him at Le Boeuf) brought him into the world of popular music. Already a jazz enthusiast, Wiener found fame with Doucet in the music hall s of Europe as a piano duo, under the name "Wiener et Doucet" in which they performed classical music, hot dance and jazz. The two friends recorded many duos between 1925 and 1937. After the end of the war in 1945, Wiener devoted himself fully to composition, notably film music (working on more than 300), as well as the opening theme music for ORTF's film history program "History speechless" (History without words). He was of some significance in the promotion of new music, both by his friends in the Les Six (Milhaud, Poulenc, etc.), and by composers such as Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. His compositions involve the use of jazz informed by French wit and elegance. His daughter, Elizabeth Wiener, is an actress, singer and singer-songwriter. Jean Wiener published his memoirs in 1978 as Allegro Appassionato. Source: Article "Jean Wiener" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Profile

Jean Wiener

Movies

L'âge de Monsieur est avancé
Original Music Composer
Only on the stage of an empty theater, an author and his wife clash: the scene and the life end up getting confused.
Le Crime d'amour
Original Music Composer
To emerge from anonymity, a young man assumes responsibility for a crime he did not commit.
Love Letters in Somalia
Original Music Composer
In this epistolary film, the traveler gives us his impressions of Africa parallel to the expression of his amorous distress. The images of the present intertwine with the incessant echoes of lost love, combining intimate pain with the misery of a country torn apart by internal struggles and poverty.
Duelle
Au piano
The Daughter of the Moon battles the Daughter of the Sun over a magical diamond that will allow the winner to remain on Earth, specifically in modern day Paris.
The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir
Original Music Composer
Part One, "The Last Christmas Dinner," is about the relationship between an old man and an old woman, both homeless. Part Two, "The Electric Floor Polisher," is an opera-like story of a woman who is obsessed with polishing her floors. Part Three is a musical interlude featuring Jeanne Moreau singing "When Love Dies." Part Four, "The Virtue of Tolerance," concerns an old man, his young wife, and how they come to terms when she has an affair with a man her own age.
On the Lam
Original Music Composer
A young couple of burglars, waiting for trial, marry in jail. Annick writes down her observations of the women's ward. When she hears that her lover must serve a twice as long prison sentence, she plans their escape.
The Demise of Father Mouret
Original Music Composer
Serge Mouret is a frail and devout young priest in a tough country parish. When he falls down and loses his memory, he is nursed back to health by Albine, the beautiful carefree niece of the outspoken atheist Jeanbernat. After Serge and Albine fall in love, Serge recovers his memory and realizes the grave sin he has committed.
God Chose Paris
Original Music Composer
An interesting mixture of filmed scenes with Belmondo and archival footage regarding cultural aspects of all kind around Paris, starting at the end of the 19th century and ending in the mid-1960's. Jean-Paul Belmondo leads us through the movie starting as a young photographer around 1900, a reporter in both world-wars and doing fictional interviews with lots of celebrities.
A Gentle Woman
Original Music Composer
When his young wife commits suicide with no explanation, an introspective pawnbroker looks back on their life together.
Les deux coquines
Sound
The Diary of an Innocent Boy
Original Music Composer
Set in 18th century France, a naive 17-year-old orphan named Benjamin is taken in by his wealthy aunt, the Countess de Valandry. There, he is seduced by a variety of women, including a few flirtatious maidservants and neighboring countesses who all want to be Benjamin's "first".
Mouchette
Original Music Composer
A young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.
The Golem
Original Music Composer
French TV adaptation of the Golem myth
Les filous
Original Music Composer
Au Hasard Balthazar
Original Music Composer
The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.
Lady L
Krajewski
Lady L is an elegant 80-year-old woman who recalls her amorous life story, including past loves and lusty, scandalous adventures she has lived through.
Le Tigre se parfume à la dynamite
Original Music Composer
The Tiger is sent to oversee the excavation of a sunken ship. While busy to retrieve the gold tresure in it, he is constantly thwarted by international enemies. Among them is an old Nazi named Hans von Wunchendorf who dreams of world domination. He hides behind the codename "The Orchid" and needs the treasure to sustain a worldwide network of exiled former comrades. Once sanified by the gold his organisation plans to realise the endsieg after all.
Pantalaskas
Original Music Composer
An off-beat, uneven tale about a man intent on suicide and the three people who try to talk him out of it, Pantalaskas stars American Carl Studer in the title role of the morose, would-be suicide. Set in Paris and taking place over an entire night, the story has a complication in that the trio who want to prevent the suicide do not speak the man's language -- he is Lithuanian and speaks no French. So the protagonists comb the underbelly of a nighttime Paris, looking high and low but mostly low for anyone who speaks Lithuanian. Depending mainly on dialogue for its impact, the verbose drama reveals how the protagonists undergo a transformation as the night wears on.
A Woman Like Satan
Original Music Composer
Handsome and rich Spanish gentleman abandons his wife and riches for his love of a young girl of poor stock who taunts and degrades him.
Be Beautiful But Shut Up
Original Music Composer
A beautiful 18-year-old orphan escapes from a reformatory and hooks up with a gang of jewel smugglers, and decides on a life of crime. However, she falls for and marries a policeman, putting a crimp in her criminal career.
Neither Seen Nor Recognized
Original Music Composer
In a small French village, everything would be quiet if the local wildlife cop was not being ridiculed by a smart poacher.
Seventh Heaven
Original Music Composer
"Le septième ciel" became Raymond Bernard's last film; a black comedy about a female brewery owner who donates vast amounts of money to charitable causes. The funds to do this, she raises through her liaisons with wealthy gentlemen... who just "happen" to end up dead!
Lovers of Paris
Original Music Composer
Young, handsome, dashing but cynical, Octave Mouret arrives in Paris, determined to conquer the belles of the capital.
Notre Dame - cathédrale de Paris
Original Music Composer
La Garçonne
Original Music Composer
La Garçonne is a 1957 French film directed by Jacqueline Audry. It follows Monique, an ingenue and a clueless girl who believes in true love. When she discovers her future husband has a lover, she rebels against her bourgeois life:s he will lead a free and wild life and she will live like a man. Soon she becomes the toast of Gay Paris, sleeping with all the men around, and even with a woman.
Deadlier Than the Male
Music
In Les Halles, in the heart of Paris, the restaurateur André Chatelin, leads an uneventful life until the arrival from Marseille of Catherine, the daughter of his ex-wife Gabrielle. She tells him her mother is dead and that she is without resources. Chatelin welcomes her under his roof - then marries her. Gérard, a young student that Chatelin looks upon as a son, becomes Catherine's lover, and she sets him at odds with Chatelin. She asks him to kill the restaurateur. He refuses. She kills him. Having discovered that Gabrielle is still alive, declined and drug addicted, Chatelin realises the darkness of Catherine's soul who has always lied to him.
Rencontre à Varsovie
Music
Jacques, a young reporter, is in charge of covering the International Youth Meeting in Warsaw. He falls in love with a young participant, Mireille, who returns his love. The joy of the lovebirds is on a par with the general glee. But during a walk, they discover the ruins of the ghetto where so many victims of Nazism died. On a more intimate level, a serious problem of conscience arises for Jacques.
School for Love
Music
At the Conservatory of Vienna the student only have eyes for their beautiful singing teacher, tenor Eric Walter.
School for Love
Le professeur de piano
At the Conservatory of Vienna the student only have eyes for their beautiful singing teacher, tenor Eric Walter.
Station 307
Original Music Composer
A research expedition to the Persian Gulf and a dive near Bahrain in search of oil. The film was sponsored by the French arm of British Petroleum, and featured the ship Calypso which later became world famous.
Dust of Life
Original Music Composer
The planet is filled with dust and particles of all kinds, natural or originated by man. Such a state of things has of course a great many consequences for public health, with diseases like silicosis, inherent in various human activities, some of which are detailed (farming, notably the treatment of flax; industrial activity, particularly porcelain and cement work, coal mining).
Touchez Pas au Grisbi
Original Music Composer
Gentleman gangster Max and his partner, Riton, pull off their last, most successful heist and find themselves comfortable enough to retire in the style they enjoy. However, Max confides the details of the theft to his younger mistress, Josey -- who has secretly taken up with ambitious young rival gangster Angelo. Angelo then has Riton kidnapped and demands the stash of gold as ransom, which threatens Max's dreams of the perfect retirement.
Je suis un mouchard
Music
Mado loves Henry but is coveted by Bob Torquella, a dangerous gangster. The latter, mad with jealousy, is prepared to do everything to get rid of Henri. He and his accomplice involve him in a dangerous robbery. Henri is hurt and arrested by the police. But the young man, a weak character, denounces his accomplices. Two years later, the two gangsters run away from prison. Bob finds that Henri and Mado are husband and wife and have a daughter. In a panic, Henri runs for cover.
Forgotten Stones
Original Music Composer
Under the Paris Sky
Original Music Composer
Fates of multiple otherwise disconnected characters intertwine miraculously under the sky of Paris. And it all happens in one day.
The Century Is Fifty
Original Music Composer
As the title of this French documentary indicates, Ce Siecle a 50 Ans examines the 20th Century at its halfway point. Utilizing the archives of several European film reserves, director Denise Tua offers a fascinating mosaic of the people and events that shaped the years 1900 to 1950. Complementing the vintage film clips are three dramatized sketches, delineating the romantic customs of three different points in time. These sketches are inadequately performed, and can easily be ignored. Ce Siecle a 50 Ans both preserved and provided celluloid material for scores of future documentaries.
Rendezvous in July
Original Music Composer
Hopes and love and ambitions and friendship in a group of young jazz-loving Parisians.
The Perfume of the Lady in Black
Original Music Composer
Mathilde Stangerson just married her fiance, when she heard that Larsan, her cruel former husband, whom she believed to be dead, is actually very much alive. Taking refuge to her castle, she appealed to the journalist Rouletabille to protect her.
L'escadron blanc
Original Music Composer
A French squadron of camel drivers pursues a group of looters across the Sahara Desert. After experiencing heat, fever, and peril, the squadron finds the looters, but also lose their captain. The lieutenant takes command, leading the remaining men of the squadron back across the desert to their fort.
The Mark of the Day
Original Music Composer
Socially conscious and realistic treatment of hard working coal miners in the north of France, and a struggle between a younger and older engineer.
Zanzabelle in Paris
Music
In an animal school in the heart of Africa a giraffe wonders about the trip to Paris.
Panic
Original Music Composer
Proud, eccentric, and antisocial, Monsieur Hire has always kept to himself. But after a woman turns up dead in the Paris suburb where he lives, he feels drawn to a pretty young newcomer to town and discovers that his neighbors are only too ready to suspect the worst of him.
Back Streets of Paris
Music
Madame Rose runs a seedy hotel in a suburb of Paris. Strong-minded but without the least moral scruple, she once killed her husband whose honesty was a hindrance to her business. Under a suspended sentence, she now indulges in smuggling. One day, Victor, one of her former accomplices hounded by the police, finds sanctuary with her. During a drinking spree, he has the bad idea to entrust to her a suitcase filled with bank notes, a loot with which Victor hopes to rebuild his life in South America. But Rose, lured by temptation, betrays Victor, who is arrested by the police. However, he manages to escape with only one thing in mind, to take revenge on Rose...
The Scarecrow
Original Music Composer
Animated short originally produced in France by Paul Grimault.
The Lightning Rod Thief
Original Music Composer
Winner of the grand prize at the 1946 Venice Biennale
The Passengers of Ursa Major
Original Music Composer
A futuristic cruise ship with a crew of robots is ready to take its first flight. A boy follows his curious dog on board of the ship, but then the ship takes off. The robots sees the boy as a blind passenger and try to get him off the flying ship.
Le Voyageur de la Toussaint
Original Music Composer
A young man comes back to his hometown to be confronted with a bourgeois obnoxious family who has always despised his -now dead - parents because they were music hall artists, "entertainers". But because he's the sole legatee of an uncle's fortune, his relatives become friendly with him.. at least for a while.
Immortal France
The story of how the people of Paris cope with the strains and struggles of war, from the siege of the city by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 to the invasion by the Germans in World War II.
Immortal France
Music
The story of how the people of Paris cope with the strains and struggles of war, from the siege of the city by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 to the invasion by the Germans in World War II.
Cristobal's Gold
Original Music Composer
Dupuy, the first officer of the Cristobal, a French merchant ship, is informed by cabaret dancer La Rubia that the Cristobal carries a priceless secret cargo of gold. Based on the novel by Albert t'Serstevens.
The Last Turning
Music
Frank, a hobo, ends up in a garage-truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Nick Marino, its older, kind and naive owner, is married to Cora, a sexy and mercenary woman half his age. Frank, although not a fan of hard work, accepts Nick's offer to work for him. Of course, it is not for Nick's sake that the young man becomes his attendant, but for the love of Cora under whose spell he has fallen at once. It does not take long before Cora, who despises her husband, asks her lover to help her get rid of him. Frank is reluctant at first but ...
Behind the Facade
Le pianiste au cabaret (uncredited)
The owner of an apartment building is found murdered. Two rival policemen, Boucheron and Lambert, investigate the matter and get into the private lives of the tenants: an unfaithful judge, a crippled blind man and his daughter, an eccentric knife thrower, a shoplifter (and proud of it!), a bourgeois lady who has a bone to pick with a gigolo, a mistress who cheats on her lover, not forgetting the caretaker and a soldier in love.
The Woman at the End of the World
Original Music Composer
A sailor falls in love with an innkeeper on a lost island.
Le messager de la lumière
Original Music Composer
De Man Zonder Hart
Music
When his colleague presents him with (forged) evidence of his wife Sylvette's unfaithfulness, factory owner Jean Sourdier kills him in a fit of rage. After fifteen years in prison he is determined to take revenge on his wife by killing Ninette, a daughter from her second marriage.
Nights of Fire
Original Music Composer
19th Century Russia. State prosecutor Fedor Andreiev is presiding over the trial of a man who murdered his wife's lover. Despite a robust defence from the brilliant young lawyer Serge Rostoff, the accused man is found guilty and will be deported to Siberia. Having spoken to the condemned man, Fedor Andreiev sees a disturbing parallel with his own life...
L'homme sans coeur
Original Music Composer
Sentenced to 20 years after killing a colleague for revealing that his wife was unfaithful, Sourdier escapes hoping to kill the woman as well.He learns she was true to him and has had a little girl who thinks the father is dead.
The Man of the Day
Music
Alfred Boulard, a good-natured electrician, gives his blood to save Mona Thalia, a great theater actress. Mona Thalia survives and Boulard becomes the man of the hour. Grateful to him, Mona helps Alfred to become a singing star. But his fame will be short-lived.
The Lower Depths
Music
Inhabitants of a flophouse struggle to survive under the harsh treatment imposed by the landlord, Kostyleva. One resident, young thief Wasska Pepel, ends his affair with the landlord's wife, Vassilissa, and takes up with her sister, Natacha. Pepel also befriends the baron, a former nobleman fallen on hard times, but Pepel's attempts at happiness are complicated when he's accused of murder by a spiteful Vassilissa.
Quand minuit sonnera
Original Music Composer
A criminal is being blackmailed by his former accomplices. He does everything in his power to gain time because the statutory limitation for the crime he committed starts at midnight.
Klokslag Twaalf
Music
On his wedding day, mere hours before the statute of limitations for his crimes expires, revengeful mobsters abduct former criminal Jean Verdier. The gang leader's daughter - who's still in love with Jean - tries to stall the police until the clock strikes twelve and he can no longer be prosecuted.
The Tomboy
Music
The eponymous garçonne or flapper is Monique Lerbier, an emancipated French woman who leaves home to escape a marriage of convenience to a man she does not love which her parents have forced on her. She then falls into all sorts of carnal temptations and artificial pleasures previously unknown to her. These include her being seduced into a lesbian love affair by a chanteuse.
The Crime of Monsieur Lange
Original Music Composer
A man and a woman arrive in a cafe-hotel near the Belgian frontier. The customers recognize the man from the police's description: his name is Amedee Lange, and he murdered somebody in Paris. Lange was an employee in a printing works. His boss was a real bastard, swindling every one, seducing female workers... One day he fled to avoid facing his creditors, and the workers set up a cooperative to go on working. What then made Lange a killer?
Le voyage imprévu
Music
A husband orders his wife to recover a lost slipper. The wife enlists the aid of her friend, Beatrice (Betty Stockfield) to bring the slipper to her in Switzerland, and Georges (Roger Treville) follows Betty.
La Bandera
Original Music Composer
Pierre Gilieth has committed a murder in Paris. He flees to Barcelona, where he runs out of money. So he joins the Spanish Foreign Legion. He meets there two fellow countrymen, Mulot and Lucas. He tries to forget his fault... but Lucas's friendship soon appears to be less unselfish...
Phénomènes électriques
Original Music Composer
The Adventurer
Music
A scandalised Frenchman returns from Africa where he has been involved in illegal trading of mines (resulting in the deaths of many African miners). His bourgeois family are wary of the shame that he will bring so he must try to redeem himself and his family's name.
Maria Chapdelaine
Music
A young woman has three suitors on her father's logging ranch on the Quebec frontier.
S. S. Tenacity
Music
Bastien and Ségard decide to leave France for Canada. They buy tickets aboard a rickety craft, the Tenacity, that never quite seems able to leave port. While stuck there they both fall for the innkeeper's daughter, which causes them to rethink their Canadian notions.
Knock, ou le triomphe de la médecine
Sound Director
"Everybody is ill: you just don't know it yet". Knock, a newly arrived physician takes over a small town through fear and authority. NB : this is a different movie from the 1951 version where Louis Jouvet also plays Dr Knock.
Une vie perdue
Music
A jealous young woman murders her husband's mistress. A notorious scoundrel is accused of the crime. When, seized with remorse, the young woman goes to see the prosecutor to confess her crime, she is hit by a car and loses her memory. Her husband judges that she has earned the right to be forgotten and to happiness.
The Man in the Hispano-Suiza
Music
The almost financially ruined French gentleman Gaston Dewalter spends several days in Biarritz before going off in the Hispano-Suiza, a luxe car which was a present from his friends. George becomes the lover of Lady Stéphane Oswill pretending he is wealthy. Then Stéphane spends the remaining funds with which the now desperate George hoped to rebuild his fortune in Senegal.
The Man in the Hispano-Suiza
Sound
The almost financially ruined French gentleman Gaston Dewalter spends several days in Biarritz before going off in the Hispano-Suiza, a luxe car which was a present from his friends. George becomes the lover of Lady Stéphane Oswill pretending he is wealthy. Then Stéphane spends the remaining funds with which the now desperate George hoped to rebuild his fortune in Senegal.
The Crazy Ray
Original Music Composer
A night watchman on the Eiffel Tower wakes up to find the entire population of the city frozen in place.
The Woman from Nowhere
Music
A fifty year old woman, scarred by a life of disillusionment and regret, returns to the place where she lived twenty years before, to rekindle happier memories. She meets a young woman, the daughter of the current owners of the property, who is on the point of abandoning her home – just as she did, all those years ago...
The Woman from Nowhere
Le pianiste
A fifty year old woman, scarred by a life of disillusionment and regret, returns to the place where she lived twenty years before, to rekindle happier memories. She meets a young woman, the daughter of the current owners of the property, who is on the point of abandoning her home – just as she did, all those years ago...