Biography for
Claude Jutra More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

11 March 1930, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Date of Death

5 November 1986, Montréal, Québec, Canada (suicide by drowning)

Birth Name

Claude Jutras

Mini Biography

He finished his medical studies at the age of 22 to please his parents, but he was already developing an attraction to the visual arts and to cinema. As a teenager, he had made two shorts with Michel Brault. In 1953, he wrote a television script. He joined the Office national du film du Canada (National Film Board) in 1954. After his first feature film was made in 1958, he went to France, where he worked with both François Truffaut and Jean Rouch. In the 1960s, he became involved in the 'cinema direct' movement, once again back in Quebec. In 1971, he directed Mon oncle Antoine (1971), nearly unanimously believed to be his best work, as well as one of the greatest works of the Canadian cinema. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Jutra worked mostly in Toronto, where funding was easier come by. He began to suffer from a severe case of early-onset Alzheimer's and, given his knowledge of the condition due to his medical training, chose to take his own life. Just as the character he created in À tout prendre (1964), Jutra drowned himself in the freezing waters of the St. Lawrence River. His body was not recovered until the following spring.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Jean-Marie Berthiaume <jiembe@videotron.ca>

Trivia

Has a small park named after him in Montreal.

When a local equivalent of the Oscar was created for the Province of Quebec (Canada) it was named after him.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 483-488. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Claude Jutra took the ''s'' off his name (Jutras to Jutra) because he said there was only one Jutra.