French producer, director, and actor Jean-François Davy, 79, died on May 2. The native Parisian was interested in films from an early age, and during his civil service in Ouagadougou, he made educational films for African farmers. Back in Paris, Davy plunged into the nouvelle vague cinema, learning his trade. By the late 1960s, he was producing, writing and directing his own films; their general subject matter can be ascertained by their titles (even for those of you who are even worse at French than I am): La Débauche, Infidélités, Les Pornocrates (a documentary on the porn-film industry), Doubles Pénétrations, Les Nuits d'Orgies d'Agnès—though not all of them were nudies; there were also a good number of romances and light comedies. One of his more popular films was the comedy Chausette Surprise, which translates to the delightful Surprise Sock. Davy spent his career dealing with France’s ever-changing censorship laws; President Pompidou (1969-74) was particularly unforgiving about naughty films.
