He shot Jacques Becker's last film, Le Trou, and then worked several times with Becker's son Jean, who was also Cloquet's brother-in-law.
He also worked with several non-French directors, most notably Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, and Arthur Penn (Four Friends).
He won an Oscar in 1981 (on his first nomination) for Polanski's Tess, which he completed after the death of Geoffrey Unsworth.
Cloquet married into the Becker filmmaking family (which included directors Jacques and Jean, cinematographer Étienne, and actress Françoise Fabian), when he wed Jacques Becker's daughter Sophie, then a script girl.