The son of a carpenter, Couzinet became a traveling projectionist and then director of the
Royan Casino. In the 1920s, he decided to invest in the of
movie theatres, including those of . In 1930, due to the unbridled competition of the barriers of Bordeaux, he acquired his own studios, the "Studios de la Côte de Beauté", a cinema complex installed in the seaside resort of Royan. After the destruction of the city at the end of World War II, he recreated his studios in Bordeaux, which then took the name ''Studios de la Côte d'Argent''. The infrastructures were developed near the castle Tauzin which became its main residence He produced himself vaudevilles, of which he was also the screenwriter (occasionally under the name of Robert Eyquem) sometimes at the first degree or a little grivois, often adapted from
boulevard theatre. Thus,
Trois jours de bringue à Paris is an adaptation of '
by Eugène Labiche whereas ' is drawn from a play by
Pierre Barillet and
Jean-Pierre Gredy. As a representative pillar of popular cinema, he produced jubilant films including '
, ',
The Cucuroux Family,
Le Congrès des belles-mères, and also '
. If comedy was his favorite field, Couzinet also touched on other genres such as swashbuckler films ('), literary adaptation (
Colomba after
Prosper Mérimée) or family melodrama (
Quai des illusions, a film for which he employed a certain
Sergio Leone as an assistant. He made famous cinema names such as
Pierre Larquey,
Jeanne Fusier-Gir and
Gaby Morlay play in his films. But he also helped the beginnings of truculent actors such as
Jean Carmet, who appeared in
Mon curé champion du régiment and
Robert Lamoureux, who held his own role in ''Le Don d'Adèle''. The Couzinet empire gradually disappeared from the late 1950s in the context of concentration of the film industry. == Filmography ==