P
Paul West
director, writer
- Born:
- 1871-01-26, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Died:
- 1918-10-29, Seine River, France
- Professions:
- director, writer
Biography
Boston, 26 January 1871: Paul West enters the world and, almost as quickly, begins turning ink into pictures. Within a few restless decades he is shepherding shadow-plays for the new flickering art—first scripting, then steering the camera itself. Audiences of 1917 sat rapt through his Dickensian gamble *Great Expectations*; the following year they flinched at the cruelty exposed in *At the Mercy of Men* and felt the tremors of *The Ordeal of Rosetta*. Yet the Great War was carving Europe the same year his name lit marquees; on 29 October 1918 the Seine, not the screen, claimed the final frame of his life in France.
