Art direction by Ben Carré

One of the major retrospectives of the 43rd edition of le Giornate del Cinema Muto is dedicated to Ben Carré's activity as a set designer. For King Vidor's classic La Bohème (1925) with John Gilbert and Lilian Gish, Carré designed most of the sets that recreate the Parisian setting of Mimì and Rodolfo's unhappy love story. The beginning and development of Ben Carré's extraordinary career, first in France, at Gaumont with Louis Feuillade, and then in the United States alongside some of the greatest directors, can be retraced in the section curated by Emmy Award-winning set designer Thomas Walsh. Among the titles are rarely-seen classics such as Trilby (1915) and The Blue Bird (1918), the result of Carré's collaboration with Maurice Tourneur.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/1. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Lillian Gish and John Gilbert in La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/2. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Lillian Gish, John Gilbert and Renée Adorée in La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).


German postcard by Bruckmann-Verleih. Photo: Universal. Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin in The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925). Caption: Premiere at the Primus Palast 5 November 1925.


Reproduction of a film still by Warner/ Vitaphone. John Barrymore as Don Juan fights Count Giano Donati (Montague Love), while Cesare Borgia (Warner Oland) and Lucrezia Borgia (Estelle Taylor) look on in Don Juan (Alan Crossland, 1926). Set design by Ben Carré.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 86/12. Montagu Love as the Captain of the Guards, Jacqueline Logan as Mary Magdelene, Dorothy Cumming as the Virgin Mary, and Joseph Striker as the Apostle John in The King of Kings (Cecil B. DeMille, 1927). Photo: National Film. Caption: Under the Cross.

The creator of the Emerald City

Ben Carré was born Benjamin S. Carré in Paris, France in 1883. His father, a professional painter and decorator, died when Carré was six years old. At thirteen, Carré left school to become an apprentice house painting estimator. Finding his talent lay in painting rather than arithmetic, he took a job as an assistant scene painter at Atelier Amable, at the time one of the most important scenic art studios in Paris. One of his first jobs was painting a large-scale reproduction of the Paris 1900 World's Fair for London's Earl Court Exhibition Hall. Within two years he was designing and painting backgrounds for the Paris Opéra, the Comédie-Française, and Covent Garden in London.

Like many stage designers of the era, Ben Carré was attracted to the burgeoning film industry. In 1905, the then 22-year-old Carré joined Gaumont as a scenic artist. He worked as Messier's assistant in Alice Guy's last years (1906-1907) at Gaumont before she moved to the U.S. Carré is credited for working as art director on films by Louis Feuillade such as Le Huguenot/The Huguenot (Louis Feuillade, 1909), La Mort de Mozart/Mozart's Last Requiem (Étienne Arnaud, Louis Feuillade, 1909), Le Festin de Balthazar/The Feast of Balthazar (Louis Feuillade, 1910) and Aux lions les chrétiens/The Christian Martyrs (Louis Feuillade, 1911). He overturned previous practice by insisting on painting his sets in colour. Soon after, the rest of Gaumont's scenic artists followed suit, and other studios followed soon after. After seven years at Gaumont, Carré moved to the United States in 1912.

Carré first worked for the American Eclair Film Company, based in New York. Carré was unimpressed by the quality of American production and was reportedly miserable until Maurice Tourneur came along. After director Tourneur emigrated from France in 1914, the pair worked on 31 films together. Carré did the art direction for classic Tourneur films such as the comedy-drama Poor Little Rich Girl (Maurice Tourneur, 1917) starring Mary Pickford, the fantasy The Blue Bird (Maurice Tourneur, 1918), and the adventure drama The Last of the Mohicans (Maurice Tourneur, 1920) with Wallace Beery. Carré also worked for many films with early film stars like Clara Kimball Young, House Peters, Olga Petrova, and Seena Owen.

In the 1920s, Carré worked as a freelance art director. He designed sets for The Red Lily (Fred Niblo, 1924) starring Ramon Novarro and created the catacombs for the Horror film The Phantom of the Opera (Ruper Julian, 1925) starring Lon Chaney. Carré worked on a string of films for the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, starting with The Masked Bride (Christy Cabanne, Josef von Sternberg, 1925) with Mae Murray. He produced key sketches for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1925) but received no screen credit because he left MGM mid-production to join Warner Bros. There he worked on the John Barrymore vehicle Don Juan (Alan Crosland, 1925), the first film to feature a synchronised musical score. At Warner he also designed the sets of the part-talkies Noah's Ark (Michael Curtiz, 1928) and The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927) starring Al Jolson, and later also A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935). He designed the sets of Murnau's City Girl (F.W. Murnau, 1930), and the Golgotha scene in Cecil DeMille's Biblical epic The King of Kings (1927).

Due primarily to ill health, Ben Carré retired from art direction in 1937 but continued to work on background painting and the creation of miniatures. He created the Emerald City for the Technicolor fantasy The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) and worked on such classic musicals Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944), An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951), and Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, 1952) starring Gene Kelly. He also painted the backgrounds for the historical dramas Marie Antoinette (W. S. Van Dyke, 1938) starring Norma Shearer as the ill-fated Queen of France, and Julius Caesar (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953) with Marlon Brando. Ben Carré retired in 1965 at the age of 82. In addition to his film work, Carré was a prodigious painter and exhibitor of watercolours featuring Los Angeles cityscapes. He also designed murals for the General Motors Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1969. He died in 1978 in Santa Monica, California.


French postcard. Mae Murray in the American silent film The Masked Bride (Christy Cabanne, Joseph von Sternberg. 1925).


Italian programme card for Il Cinema Ritrovata 2011. Photo: Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin in Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925).


Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Florence, no. 426. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn, Roma. Antonio Moreno and Alice Terry in Mare Nostrum (Rex Ingram, 1926).


Vintage postcard. Photo: Warner Bros. John Barrymore in Don Juan (Alan Crosland, 1926).


French postcard by Europe, no. 452. Photo: United Artists / Regal Film. Douglas Fairbanks in The Iron Mask (Allan Dwan, 1929).


British large card by Picturegoer, in the Colored Art Series, no. CA 8. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Norma Shearer in Marie-Antoinette (W.S. Van Dyke, 1938). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


Vintage autograph card. Photo: Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly in An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951).


Big programme card by Cineteca Bologna for Il Cinema Ritrovato, XXXVI edizione, Selezione Cinema Ritrovato Young, 2 July 2022. Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952).

Sources: Thomas Walsh (BenCarré.com), Encyclopedia, I.S.Mowis (IMDb), le Giornate del Cinema Muto (Italian), Wikipedia (English and French), and IMDb.