Alexandre Trauner: Spotlight on a Renowned Set Designer
Let’s discover Alexandre Trauner (1906–1993), one of the greatest set designers in French cinema, master of poetic realism and unparalleled painter of Paris on film.
The Formative Years
Born in Hungary in 1906, Alexandre Trauner arrived in Paris in 1929, fleeing fascism in his homeland. Trained at the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts, he began his career as a painter in the Épinay film studios, where he assisted Lazare Meerson (1900–1938), a Polish-born set designer and master of poetic realism. It was alongside Meerson that he helped shape the image of a popular and picturesque Paris, particularly through René Clair‘s films: Sous les toits de Paris (1930), Le Million (1931), and Quatorze Juillet (1932). His art consisted of reconstructing a studio version of Paris that was both familiar and idealized.
From Hôtel du Nord to Subway, Alexandre Trauner, as a set designer, recreated the capital many times over. Through his eyes, Paris took on countless forms.
First Sets: Poetic Realism
Starting in 1937, Trauner designed his own sets for Marcel Carné. He quickly established himself as the new master of poetic realism with films like:
– Drôle de drame (1937) and Le Quai des brumes (1938): misty atmospheres and mystery along the Seine.
– Hôtel du Nord (1938): a masterful reconstruction of the Canal Saint-Martin at the Billancourt studios, so realistic the public believed it was real.
– Le Jour se lève (1939): a dreamlike suburb where a solitary building embodies the isolation of Jean Gabin’s character.
Another one of their greatest successes was the film Ciboulette (1933) by Claude Autant-Lara, for which they recreated 1830s Paris in the studio. The film is especially famous for its prodigious opening shot, which moves in a single sweep from the outer gates of the city to the old Les Halles market, passing by the Church of Saint-Eustache and the Fountain of the Innocents. It cleverly blends huge models with actual sets built in the Saint-Maurice studios. During this formative period, Trauner tirelessly wandered the streets of Paris with his friends from Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés, such as Jacques Prévert and the Octobre group, or fellow Hungarian exiles like photographers Brassaï and André Kertész.
In the mid-1930s, Trauner began signing his own sets, and his work for Drôle de drame (1937) and Le Quai des brumes (1938) by Marcel Carné quickly confirmed him as the most talented set designer of his generation. In 1938, he created his first Parisian sets: first for Entrée des artistes, featuring young actors alongside Louis Jouvet at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, and then for Hôtel du Nord. At the Billancourt studio, Trauner rebuilt the striking set of Quai de Jemmapes and the Canal Saint-Martin. His design was so realistic, and the result so ingrained in the city’s collective imagination, that Parisians campaigned decades later to preserve the real façade of a hotel that, in the film, was merely a wooden and plaster illusion. The success was equally great the following year with Le Jour se lève, also by Carné, for which Trauner recreated in Billancourt a fictional suburb where a tramway line ends at nearby vegetable plots. A solitary building towers over the set to emphasize the isolation of Jean Gabin’s character, spending his final night in a tiny room before the police arrive.
Trauner remained active during the Occupation but had to go underground and settle for designing sets executed by others. One such case was the French film of the era: Les Enfants du paradis (1944–1945) by Carné, with sets built by Léon Barsacq. The boulevard du Temple—known as the ‘Boulevard of Crime’—was the most elaborate of these, evoking the theater district of 19th-century Paris. The set was built at Victorine Studios in Nice, where Trauner worked his magic, manipulating building façades to cast dramatic shadows and mask the bright southern light.
Post-War
Made right after the Liberation, Les Portes de la nuit (1946), again by Carné, required a full studio reconstruction of the north of Paris—Barbès to Pont de Crimée—at Joinville and Vincennes. Its most iconic set was the elevated Barbès-Rochechouart metro station and nearby boulevard de la Chapelle, entirely rebuilt. Less grand but equally striking were the basin at La Villette with its barges, the Canal de l’Ourcq, and the rue des Petites-feuilles—all remarkable examples of stylized realism.
In 1945, Trauner had Marcel Magniez build his models for Les Malheurs de Sophie by Jacqueline Audry (featuring barricades from 1848 in a Paris under siege). Four years later, Auguste Capelier executed his sets for Manèges by Yves Allégret. Bourgeois apartments in Neuilly, a carousel, and its surroundings were recreated at the Neuilly and Saint-Maurice studios, with exteriors shot mostly in the Bois de Boulogne.
With the Americans
Trauner was now France’s most celebrated set designer and naturally attracted American directors filming in Paris during the 1950s. In 1953, for Un Acte d’amour by Anatole Litvak, he recreated postwar Paris at Saint-Maurice and Joinville studios, with a standout Grand Palais set used to house American soldiers.
In 1956, Ariane marked the beginning of Trauner’s long collaboration with Billy Wilder. At Boulogne studios, he built sets of the Ritz Hotel, the Paris Opera, and the banks of the Seine. Though made with fewer resources, Du rififi chez les hommes (1954) by Jules Dassin was filmed in the actual streets of Paris—like rue de la Paix—but all interiors were constructed at Photosonor Studios.
For Paris Blues (1961) by Martin Ritt, Trauner rebuilt Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the studio. He then designed the upscale Paris of Aimez-vous Brahms? (1961) and Le Couteau dans la plaie (1962), before depicting Belleville’s working-class neighborhoods in Gigot (1962) by Gene Kelly. But it was in the Hollywood studios of Samuel Goldwyn that Trauner created his most iconic Paris: Irma la Douce (1963) by Wilder, a colorful reimagining of Les Halles and its eccentric residents. He returned to Paris for the sets of How to Steal a Million (1966) by William Wyler and La Puce à l’oreille (1968) by Jacques Charon.
Permanently back in France by the mid-1970s, Trauner designed the sets for Monsieur Klein (1975) by Joseph Losey, a poignant portrait of Occupied Paris. Most exterior shots were filmed in the 7th arrondissement and on rue des Abbesses. While Klein’s apartment on rue du Bac was built at Boulogne studios, real locations like La Nouvelle Ève cabaret, La Coupole restaurant, and Château de La Rochefoucauld in Ivry-la-Bataille were also used.
Subway (1984) by Luc Besson combined real metro locations with studio interiors. Autour de minuit (1985) by Bertrand Tavernier returned to the Paris Blues spirit, recreating the streets and jazz clubs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés at Épinay Studios. For Wilder’s Fedora (1977), Trauner filmed a solemn funeral scene at the real Jacquemard-André Museum. He also contributed to Tchao Pantin (1983) by Claude Berri, shot on location in Belleville and in abandoned warehouses outside Paris.
In 1989, Alexandre Trauner made one final Paris on screen in Jean-Pierre Rawson’s Comédie d’amour. It revisited 1930s Paris as described by author Paul Léautaud, but the sets—Léautaud’s home in Fontenay-aux-Roses, his Mercure de France office, and the literary circles of the time—were actually built in Lisbon. Over a fifty-year career, Trauner was a keen observer of Paris’s changing landscape. But he will be remembered above all as one of the set designers who most vividly shaped the poetic and cinematic image of Paris.