During his career, he wrote 80 films for directors such as René Clément, Bertrand Tavernier, Marcel Carné, Jean Delannoy and Claude Autant-Lara.

[citation needed] In 1933, Jean Aurenche co-directed two short documentaries with Pierre Charbonnier: Pirates du Rhône and Bracos de Sologne.

Meanwhile, Aurenche & Bost started a fertile collaboration with Jean Delannoy, writing for him La Symphonie Pastorale (1947) which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival of 1947.

In 1954, future filmmaker François Truffaut wrote an article in Les Cahiers du Cinéma harshly criticizing the work of Jean Aurenche & Pierre Bost.

The writing team progressively went out of fashion and barely worked during the 1960s as their favorite collaborators (Autant-Lara, Clément, Delannoy) grew older and retired.

In 1970, young filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier (who was a fan of their work), asked them to write with him an adaptation of L'Horloger d'Everton (a Georges Simenon novel) for his first feature film.

Named La Suite à l'écran (To be continued on the screen), this book co-written by French journalist Alain Riou contained insights and information about most of Jean Aurenche's screenplays and collaborators.