French postcard by World Postcards, 1989, no. X213. Christophe Lambert in Subway (Luc Besson, 1985).
French postcard by Ciné Passion, no. GB 2. Photo: Jean-Marc Barr in Le grand bleu/The Big Blue (Luc Besson, 1988).
French postcard by Especially for you, Ref. 30. Photo: publicity still for Le grand bleu/The Big Blue (Luc Besson, 1988). Jean-Marc Barr, Rosanna Arquette and Luc Besson at the set.
French postcard, no. PP 104. Jean Reno and Natalie Portman in Léon/Léon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994).
French postcard by Sonis, no. C. 851. Photo: Gaumont. Milla Jovovich in Le cinquième élément/The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997).
Hollywood productions from France
Luc Paul Maurice Besson was born in Paris in 1959. He was the son of two Club Méditerranée scuba diving instructors who worked in Greece, Italy and former Yugoslavia. Luc intended to become a marine biologist. The family returned to France when he was 10. His parents divorced, and both remarried. At age 17, Besson had a diving accident that left him unable to dive and finished his dream of becoming a marine biologist.
He decided for a career in film. Besson soon made his first short film and wrote the first versions of what would grow into his films Le grand bleu/The Big Blue (1988) and the Sci-Fi epic Le cinquième élément/The Fifth Element (1997). From 1976 to 1982, Besson did various jobs in the film industry and was an assistant to directors including Claude Faraldo and Patrick Grandperret.
He directed three short films, a commissioned documentary, and several commercials. In the early 1980s, Besson met Éric Serra and asked him to compose the score for his first short film, L'Avant dernier. He subsequently had Serra compose for other films. For three years, he worked in Hollywood. Then Besson debuted with Le dernier combat/The Last Battle (1983), a post-apocalyptic drama with similarities to Mad Max, co-written with Pierre Jolivet. Inspired by Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962), Besson filmed it in CinemaScope and black and white and without dialogue.
Le Dernier Combat/The Last Battle features Jean Reno's first prominent role. Reno later appeared in several films by Besson, including Subway (1985), Le grand bleu/The Big Blue (1988), Nikita/La Femme Nikita (1990), and Léon (1994). Le dernier combat won an award at the Avoriaz International Fantastic Film Festival in 1983. That same year, Besson directed Isabelle Adjani's video clip Pull Marine.
He signed a contract with Gaumont and two years later directed Subway (1985), starring Isabelle Adjani and Christophe Lambert. The film imposed a cartoon-like world of music videos and when it was presented at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown out of competition, some of the public hissed at the film's advertising-like style. However, the film won three Césars and was a huge box office hit. Then Besson had his breakthrough in France with Le grand bleu/The Big Blue (1988). Critics counted him among the French movement ‘Cinema du look’, with a strong focus on art direction. Le Grand Bleu/The Big Blue and his later film Le cinquième élément/The Fifth Element (1997), are seen as examples of this movement and as Hollywood productions from France.
French postcard in the Collection 9. 1/2 by Editions Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. ST-65. Photo: Christophe Lambert in Subway (Luc Besson, 1985).
French postcard by News Productions, Beaulmes, no 56063. Photo: Eric Coiffier. Director and cast of Le grand bleu/The Big Blue (Luc Besson, 1988) at the Festival de Cannes, 1988. From left to right: Marc Duret, Jean-Marc Barr, Rosanna Arquette, Jean Reno, Luc Besson, Sergio Castellitto and Andréas Voutsinas.
French postcard by Ciné Passion, no. GB 8. Photo: publicity still for Le grand bleu/The Big Blue (Luc Besson, 1988).
French postcard, no. PP 122. Jean Reno in Léon/Léon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994).
French postcard, no. PP 108. Jean Reno in Léon/Léon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994).
Films that cut across French and American cultures
Luc Besson fought against the rules and beliefs imposed by French film producers and distributors. He wanted to show that French cinema was capable of more than what he considered pseudo-intellectual films. Through his films, he wanted to show how the French film industry could compete against Hollywood, by making films that cut across French and American cultures. He co-financed his films, shot his films in English and left control with the director.
In 1980, near the beginning of his career, he founded his own production company, Les Films du Loup, in 1990 renamed Les Films du Dauphin. It was followed by a second company in 1992, called Leeloo Productions. With his thriller Nikita/La Femme Nikita (1990) starring Anne Parillaud, he made again a hyper-violent, stylised and visually present film about a society in decline.
His sixth film was the action-thriller Léon/Léon: The Professional (1994) starring Jean Reno, Gary Oldman and Natalie Portman in her film debut. The plot centres on a professional hitman who reluctantly takes in a twelve-year-old girl after her family is murdered by a corrupt agent. Besson gave the film an emotional undertone and added conscience and hope to the violence. The exterior shots were filmed in New York and most of the interior shots were in France. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics and brought him international recognition.
In 1997, he moved to Los Angeles with his wife, actress Maïwenn, and their daughter Shanna, to work with Gaumont on what was to become the biggest commercial success for a French film in the United States, Le Cinquième Élément/The Fifth Element (1997), starring Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, and Milla Jovovich. This success was later surpassed by his production Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008). The film's sets and creatures were designed by Moebius and Jean-Claude Mézières, and the costumes by Jean-Paul Gaultier. The film won him the César for Best Director in 1998, and Milla Jovovich soon became his new wife.
In 1998, Luc Besson supervised the action comedy Taxi directed by Gérard Pirès. It was Besson's first production as a non-director, and the film was a surprise success. Meanwhile, Jeanne d'Arc/The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), his new version of the story of Joan of Arc, attracted three million cinema-goers. Jeanne/Joan was played by Milla Jovovich, from whom he divorced the year the film was released. At the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, Besson was appointed President of the Jury.
French poster postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 335. Christophe Lambert in Subway (Luc Besson, 1985).
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 489. Image: Gaumont. French poster by Malinowski for Le grand bleu/The Big Blue (Luc Besson, 1988).
French postcard by Editions Ramsay / Editions F. Nugeron, no. 49. Image: Gaumont. French poster by Malinowski for the long version of Le grand bleu/The Big Blue (Luc Besson, 1988).
English postcard by Cinema. French poster by Gaumont for Le cinquième élément/The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997).
French postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1053. French poster by Gaumont / Leeloo Productions for Jeanne d'Arc/The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (Luc Besson, 1999) with Milla Jovovich.
Three failures
In the 2000s, Luc Besson seemed to give up directing and to become a full-time producer. He and longtime collaborator Pierre-Ange Le Pogam changed the name of their film company from Leeloo Productions to EuropaCorp. They wanted to develop a new trend in mainstream cinema based on successful films such as the Taxi series (1998–2007), the Transporter series (2002–2008), and the Jet Li films Kiss of the Dragon (Chris Nahon, 2001) and Unleashed/Danny the Dog (Louis Letterier, 2005). Their English-language films Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008), Taken 2 (Olivier Megaton, 2012), and Taken 3 (Olivier Megaton, 2014), all starring Liam Neeson, were major successes, with Taken 2 becoming the largest-grossing export French film. At the same time, Besson was overseeing the adaptation of the Arthur series of children's novels that he cowrote with Céline Garcia. Now at the head of a highly profitable studio, he nonetheless continued to make his own films.
The experimental black-and-white film Angel-A (2005), starring Jamel Debbouze and Rie Rasmussen, received mixed reviews from critics and failed to match the success of its predecessors with audiences. The Children’s film Arthur and the Minimoys (2006) was his 10th film. The live-action/animated fantasy film drew a French audience of six million and was exported worldwide. He decided to shoot the two sequels himself at the same time. But Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard (2009), and Arthur 3: War of Two Worlds (2010), only attracted half the audience of the first. Lucy (2014), starring Scarlett Johansson became the biggest success for a French feature film, with $459 million. At the same time, Besson enjoyed success by producing the Taken saga between 2008 and 2015.
His blockbuster Valérian et la Cité des mille planets/Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2016) was adapted from the comic book series ‘Valérian et Laureline’ by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières. The film had the biggest budget in the history of French cinema, but the investment proved impossible to make a return on. The failure was repeated with his next film, Anna (2019). At the same time, Taxi 5 (Frank Gastambide, 2019) also disappointed. These three failures left EuropaCorp almost bankrupt. Besson had to sell it to a creditor and close the free, no-credentials scriptwriting and directing school he had founded in 2012.
Following the Covid-19 pandemic, which interrupted a large part of film production, and the accusation of rape by Dutch-Belgian actress Sand Van Roy, who appeared in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, the filmmaker did not shoot for three years but announced that he had written 17 screenplays. In 2023, Besson was definitively cleared of all charges of rape, following a ruling by the Court of Cassation, the highest judicial court in France. Besson directed the film DogMan (2023), starring Caleb Landry Jones, which was released to positive reviews. However, box-office results were disappointing. His next film was the romantic comedy Weekend in Taipei (2024), for which he co-wrote the screenplay. In 2024, while his film June and John was still in post-production, he began shooting Dracula: A Love Tale, an adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. For the occasion, he reunited with the lead actor of DogMan, Caleb Landry Jones.
Luc Besson has been married four times. In 1986, he wed actress Anne Parillaud who starred in his film Nikita/La Femme Nikita (1990). They had a daughter, Juliette, born in 1987, but divorced in 1991. Besson's second wife was actress and director Maïwenn, whom he started dating when he was 31 and she 15. They married in late 1992 when Maïwenn, then 16, was pregnant with their daughter Shanna, born in 1993. Maïwenn later claimed that their relationship was the inspiration for Besson's film Léon (1994), in which the plot concerned the emotional relationship between a grown man and a 12-year-old girl. Their marriage ended in 1997, when, while filming The Fifth Element (1997), Besson got into a relationship with actress Milla Jovovich. In 1997, Besson, aged 38, married 21-year-old Jovovich. They divorced in 1999. In 2004, Besson married film producer Virginie Silla, with whom he has three children.
French poster postcard for Taxi (Gérard Pirès, 1998), produced by Luc Besson.
French poster postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1105. Image: Lululolo @ Caracteres 1999. Poster for Taxi 2 (Gérard Pirès, 2000), produced by Luc Besson.
French poster postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1397. Image: Lululolo @ Caracteres 1999. Poster for Taxi 3 (Gérard Pirès, 2003), produced by Luc Besson.
French poster postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1678. Image: Europacorp / TFI Films Production / Appoulai Prod. Poster for Angel-A (Luc Besson, 2005).
French poster postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1679. Image: Europacorp / TFI Films Production / Appoulai Prod. Poster for Angel-A (Luc Besson, 2005).
French poster postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1747. Image: Europacorp / Avalanche Productions / Appoulai Prod. French poster for Arthur et les Minimoys / Arthur and the Minimoys (Luc Besson, 2006).
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, French and English) and IMDb.
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