François Reichenbach

François Arnold Reichenbach (3 July 1921 – 2 February 1993) was a French film director, cinematographer producer and screenwriter. He directed 40 films between 1954 aEarly life

François Reichenbach was born in 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. His father Bernard Reichenbach was a successful businessman and his mother Germaine Angèle Sarah Monteux had a passion for music, which she passed on to young François.

His maternal grandfather Gaston Monteux was a wealthy industrialist: he was one of the first to buy paintings by Chagall, Braque, Picasso, Soutine, Utrillo and Modigliani. In his memoirs François Reichenbach says: "At the age of five I was terrified by all the faces in the paintings. And I became a forger. I added mustaches and hairs to the nudes of Modigliani. This hoax takes on another dimension when you know that I made a film with Orson Welles about the forger Elmyr de Hory in 1973.

He is the nephew of the industrialist and manuscript and book collector Jacques Guérin and the cousin of the film producer Pierre Braunberger, who encouraged him to make films.

During the Second World War, François Reichenbach went to Geneva. Although he was born in France, he also has Swiss nationality because his paternal grandfather, Arnold Reichenbach, is a rich Swiss industrialist working in the embroidery industry in St. Gallen. He studied music at the Geneva Conservatory of Music, where he met the film director Gérard Oury.

After the Liberation, he wrote songs, notably for Édith Piaf and Marie Dubas.