Georges Dorival

Biography

A winter baby from the banks of the Seine: Georges Dorival first drew breath on 26 December 1871 in Orival-lès-Elbeuf, a Normandy village that would later be swallowed by the redrawn map of Seine-Maritime. Between the footlights and the camera he built a quiet legend—slipping from the corseted court of *Madame Sans-Gêne* in 1911, to the blood-soaked barricades of *Quatre-vingt-treize* a decade later, and finally to the dawn-lit trenches of *Dawn Over France* in 1935. Paris, the city that had applauded him for decades, ushered him out on 16 July 1939, closing the curtain on a life measured in frames and gas-lights.