Antoine Duhamel

Musician for words and images

Born in 1925 in Valmondois, he is writer Georges Duhamel and actress Blanche Albane's son, both music lovers. He grew up in this musical and artistic climate, in the company of Wagner, Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. Pupil to Jacques de la Presle, Norbert Dufourq, Olivier Messiaen, and mostly René Leibowitz, he studied at the National Conservatory Music School along with musicology and psychology at the Sorbonne.
He became familiar with film technique by devotedly attending the French Cinémathèque after it reopened in 1944, and his musical inspiration found and ideal medium in the cinema. Since then, he worked on his writing virtuosity on films, whose technical constraints developped his sense of respiration, of punctuation and of articulation, necessary qualities of a musical discourse devised from texts or images. Free spirit refusing dogmas, he broke up as early as 1950 with the avant-garde trend of serial music with the only aim of « writing music that talks to people ».
Then he followed the teachings of a real school of freedom by mixing with jazz, song, pop, and operettas. Musical director of the recording company « Les Discophiles français »,, he started venturing into films in 1956 by composing the music of commercials, of cartoons « Tintin et les oranges bleues », and of several shorts. He also wrote the score of famous TV series, « Belphégor » and « Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge », directed by Claude Barma. In the following years, he worked with Godard on « Pierrot le Fou », for Anna Karina really wanted to sing one of Antoine Duhamel's songs, and then on « Week-end » in 1968, later on with François Truffaut for « Baisers volés » and « La sirène du Mississipi ».
Alongside with the cinema, he also experiments with the stage by orchestrating operettas « Prospectus », by writing musical comedies « Les Boulots-boulots », « Gala de cirque » and music for the stage « Opéra pour un tyran », « Lorsque cinq ans seront passés ». He also sparked off many concertos for alto, violin, vibraphone and bass. In 1975, he signed the score of two major films, « Que la fête commence », by Bertrand Tavernier, and « L’acrobate », by Jean-Daniel Pollet.
In 1980, he founded the Villeurbanne Music Scool and was elected to the board of the Sacem. Golden Star for original film score for « Laissez passer » and Henry Langlois Prize of Honor at the 2008 Berlin Filmfestspiele as a composer, his exemplary success in this genre has tended to hide « the serious musician he is before all ».

Fragments of his filmography

Short films

1962 Ballade en Camargue de Philippe Condroyer
1963 Le puits et le pendule d’Alexandre Astruc
1964 Evariste Galois d’Alexandre Astruc
1997 Mandelbaum de Jean-Pierre Sougy
2000 Le vaisseau du gardon de Robert Pansard-Besson
2003 Léaud de hurle-dents de Jacques Richard
2005 Bonbon au poivre de Marc Fitoussi

TV shows

1965 Belphégor de Claude Barma
1965 Le chevalier rouge de Claude Barma
2007 Monsieur Max
2007 L’affaire Ben Barka

Feature films

1963 Méditerranée de Jean-Daniel Pollet
1964 Le grain de sable de Pierre Kast
1965 La longue marche d’Alexandre Astruc
1965 Pierrot le Fou de Jean-Luc Godart
1966 Made in USA de Jean-Luc Godard
1967 Week-end de Jean-Luc Godart
1967 Un homme à abattre de Philippe Condroyer
1968 Baisers volés de françois Truffaut
1969 La sirène du Mississipi de François Truffaut
1970 Domicile conjugal de François Truffaut
1976 Que la fête commence de Bertrand Tavernier
1976 L’acrobate de Jean-Daniel Pollet
1978 La chanson de Roland de Franck Cassenti
1980 La mort en direct de Bertrand Tavernier
1990 Daddy nostalgie de Bertrand Tavernier
1996 Ridicule de Patrice Leconte
1996 La buena vida de David Trueba
1998 La Nina de tus ojos de Fernando Trueba
1998 Le plus beau pays du monde de Marcel Bluwal
2000 Ceux d’en face de Jean-Daniel Pollet
2001 El Embrujo de Shangai de Fernando Trueba
2002 Laissez-passer de Bertrand Tavernier
2006 Jour après jour de Jean-Paul Fargier et Jean-Daniel Pollet