Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-1977), French film director, screenwriter and producer
The documentary reconstructs Clouzot's film, alternating between scenes from the 1964 film and dialogue readings between Jacques Gamblin (for Serge Reggiani) and Béjo (for Romy Schneider).
In 1908, his first work was published by Clouzot in Niort.
Other notable films in which Meurisse appeared include Julien Duvivier's inquisitorial and oppressive Marie-Octobre (1959), Jean Renoir's Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe (1959), Clouzot's courtroom drama La Vérité (1960) and crime thriller Le deuxième souffle (1966).
Quai des Orfèvres was also a comeback film for director-actor Louis Jouvet with whom Clouzot had become good friends before World War II.
Charles Vanel, a veteran French actor who had played a desperate truck driver in Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (1953), and a restaurateur opposite Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955), was cast as Sébastien's eccentric but friendly fisherman uncle Louis Maréchal.