The Cat and the Canary

Radley Metzger was born in New York and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of the City of New York where he attended their film Institute. His Master of Arts studies at Columbia University were interrupted by induction into the United States Air Force where he served as a senior film editor working on training and propaganda films.

Upon release, he entered the motion picture industry as a film editor, joining the nascent foreign film community in New York.

Among his assignments were working with Jean Renoir, adapting his French Can-Can for American release.

While employed by Janus Films (now The Criterion Collection) he created the trailers and English versions of the films of Francois Truffaut, Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman.

His entry into feature film directing was “Dark Odyssey”, a study of a young Greek boy bent on avenging his sister’s honor, whose classic Greek culture impacts tragically with the Greek-American society in New York. In reviewing this film, the NEW YORK TIMES said, “Mr. Metzger is a welcome addition to the film making community”.

With the relaxation of censorship in the United States, he went on to write and direct The Dirty Girls and The Alley Cats, and then adapted the modern versions of the literary classics, Prospere Merimee’s Carmen (Carmen, Baby) and Alexandre Dumas II’s The Lady of the Camillias (Camille 2000)

Subsequently, Radley Metzger directed Violette LeDuc’s autobiographical,“Therese and Isabelle” in France, “Little Mother” (based on the life of Eva Peron) in Germany , and the off-Broadway play, “Score” in the former Yugoslavia.

For a change of pace, he went to England and made the classic suspense play by John Willard, “The Cat and the Canary”, with an all star cast including Wendy Hiller , Edward Fox, Daniel Massey, Blackman, Carol Lynley, Olivia Hussey,and Wilfrid Hyde-White.

He has been invited to lecture at the Museum of Modern Art, The George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, the Telluride Film Festival, and the Olympia Film Festival.

In September of 2010 Radley Metzger was presented with the German Independence Award at the 17th Annual Oldenburg International Film Festival in Germany,where a retrospective of his classic films were shown.

Most recently, the Max Olphus Festival in Saarbrucken, Germany selected Therese and Isabelle to be shown.