Jean Delannoy began his film career in the 1920s as an actor. By the 1930s he had switched careers and become an editor, then a short-subjects director. By the mid-'30s he was a full-fledged director, and soon garnered a reputation as a sensitive, understated craftsman with a thorough command of the medium. By the 1950s, however, he was doing overheated melodramas and overblown epics, including a particularly undistinguished version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956)), and he was soon reduced to churning out such drivel as Action Man (1967) (US title: "Action Man") and The Double Bed (1965) (US title: "The Double Bed").