He is perhaps best remembered for his role as a desperate truck driver in Clouzot's The Wages of Fear for which he received a Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival in 1953.

He considered his "real" film debut to be in Robert Boudrioz's Tillers of the Soil, which was produced by Abel Gance in 1919 but held up for release.

[3] With the advent of sound films, his voice, and the inflections he gave, consolidated his popularity as a character actor with a wide range of colorful roles.

At the beginning of the 1930s he signed a contract with Pathé-Natan and stood out in three films by Raymond Bernard, Pathé's lead director – Montmartre (1931) as a pimp; Wooden Crosses (1932) as World War I infantryman; and as Javert alongside Harry Baur in Les Misérables (1933).

He appeared as a barkeeper in Le Grand Jeu (1934) directed by Jacques Feyder and as an airman in Anatole Litvak's L'Équipage (1935).

In 1939, he appeared as a Canadian Mountie hunting Michèle Morgan and Pierre Richard-Willm in La Loi du nord.

[3] Henri-Georges Clouzot helped get him back on track, choosing him to co-star in The Wages of Fear (1953) where he played a tough truck driver who gradually reveals his inner fragility.

The growth of French television gave him new opportunities and in 1972, he triumphed as a patriarch in Les Thibault, an adaptation of the novel by Roger Martin du Gard.

In 1931, he shot another short film, Affaire Classé with Pierre Larquey and Gabriel Gabrio, released in 1935 under the title Le Coup de minuit.

[3] In 2002, at the request of filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, Louis Sclavis composed and recorded music for Dans la nuit.

Vanel retired to Mouans-Sartoux in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, near Cannes, where he lived with Arlette Bailly (1928–2015),[1] his third wife, 36 years his junior.