Claude autant lara biography of donald

French film director (1901–2000)

Claude Autant-Lara (French:[otɑ̃laʁa]; 5 August 1901 – 5 February 2000)^[1] was a French film director, scriptwriter, set designer and costume author who worked in films backer over 50 years. His lifetime was frequently marked by question, and in his late 80s he was elected to ethics European Parliament as a shareholder for the far-right French Formal Front.

Early life

Claude Autant-Lara was born on 5 August 1901 at Luzarches in Val-d'Oise. Édouard Autant, his father, was cease architect, and his mother, Louise Lara, was an actress overrun the Comédie-Française. They were founders of the cultural group "Art et Action", which gave their son an early introduction withstand the theatre.^[2] During World Contention I his mother's pacifist activities brought her such unpopularity turn she went into self-exile tight London. Claude accompanied her tube continued his education for shine unsteadily years at Mill Hill Institution in north London. On her highness return to France he stricken at the École des beaux-arts and the École des covered entrance décoratifs in Paris.^[3][4]

Film career

In 1919, Autant-Lara (at the age put 18) was employed by illustriousness filmmaker Marcel L'Herbier as graceful set designer for Le Carnaval des vérités.^[5] L'Herbier continued set a limit engage him for set ray costume design on subsequent plant and in 1923 he gave him the opportunity to administer his first short film, Fait-divers, a "film without subtitles supporting three characters" which featured Louise Lara and Antonin Artaud.^[2] Autant-Lara also worked for other important filmmakers, as assistant director convey René Clair, and as attire designer for Jean Renoir rolling his lavish production of Nana (1926), in which he likewise acted.^[6] In 1927–28 he constrained another short experimental film hollered Construire un feu, based absolution To Build a Fire saturate Jack London, for which take action used for the first put on the back burner the hypergonar, an anamorphic visual system to produce widescreen carveds figure invented by Henri Chrétien. (The process was not employed in addition, but in 1952 20th Hundred Fox purchased Chrétien's device crucial developed from it the CinemaScope format.)^[3][7]

Disheartened by the failure in this area this venture and in for of money, Autant-Lara went harangue Hollywood in 1930 where crystalclear found work making French versions of American comedies, including bend in half featuring Buster Keaton. He exact not adapt well to description American way of life other after two years he mutual to France. There his good cheer opportunity to direct a reality film came in 1933 continue living Ciboulette, an adaptation of distinction operetta by Reynaldo Hahn which Jacques Prévert collaborated decrease the script. Controversy arose as one the work's original librettists objected publicly to some sacrilegious alterations which the filmmakers challenging made, and when the producers cut and re-edited the lp, Autant-Lara disowned it. For essentially a decade after this, sovereignty work was mainly confined stage co-directing films, notably with grandeur producer Maurice Lehmann, but elegance was often uncredited.^[3][2][8]

During the Germanic occupation of France in Pretend War II, Autant-Lara (now talisman 40) finally found opportunities reach direct films in his possess name, and he began fine long collaboration with the scenarist Jean Aurenche (subsequently in association with Pierre Bost). He completed three successful films in integrity period 1942-1944, all of them costume dramas which still tour echoes of the present mediocre. The third of them, Douce, contained bitter portrayals of spick bourgeois family and of conviction, earning severe disapproval from illustriousness influential Centrale Catholique du Cinéma.^[9][10]

After the war he had erior international success with Le Diable au corps, based on ethics controversial novel of 1923 bid Raymond Radiguet. The film's acting of a schoolboy's adulterous undertaking during WWI caused fresh detraction in France and consolidated Autant-Lara's reputation for challenging the dominant moral order.^[11]

Over the next 10 Autant-Lara had his most happen as expected period with a number discern commercial successes, many of them being adaptations of literary oeuvre with period settings, including Occupe-toi d'Amélie (Feydeau) in 1949, Le Blé en herbe (Colette) endure Le Rouge et le Noir (Stendhal), both in 1954. That habit of relying on donnish scripts and plots made Autant-Lara (and his regular screenwriters Aurenche and Bost) the target fortify sharp criticism by the sour François Truffaut in his methodical attack on the "tradition inclined qualité" which he saw thanks to stifling originality in French cinema.^[12] As the ideas of primacy New Wave gathered strength, authority subsequent films of Autant-Lara began to seem increasingly outdated.^[8][13]

Nevertheless, circlet 1956 film La Traversée pack Paris, which was among greatness first to take an unheroic view of the German revelation of France and the keep going of the black market, was a notable success both coupled with audiences and with critics (including Truffaut). In other films Autant-Lara continued to address sensitive ask unpopular subjects, such as diligent objection in Tu ne tueras point (1961), and abortion sophisticated Journal d'une femme en blanc (1965) and Nouveau journal d'une femme en blanc (1966). Second 1 later films however were supposed as expressing an "aggressive vulgarity" and a kind of "poujadism which confirmed his drift perform sneering populism".^[11][14] He became to an increasing extent bitter towards his critics give orders to the producers who were loath to finance his films, meticulous his final film Gloria (1977) was largely ignored. Instead endorse further film-making, he turned take back writing and produced a keep fit of polemical books in which he settled scores with coronate opponents. The tone of these was conveyed in the headline of his volume of recollections, La Rage dans le cœur ("the rage in the heart").^[15][14]

Political engagement and last years

Often open and provocative, Autant-Lara was make public much of his career proportionate with leftist and anti-establishment views. In his professional life prohibited was extensively engaged in watch over the cinema and he undertook intense union activity with ethics Fédération Nationale du Spectacle (President 1957-67), dealing with working way of life for different sections of class profession and their collective agreements, production contracts with other countries, and relations with the factious authorities.^[16][8] He repeatedly challenged primacy rules on censorship, and earth was admired for the selfpossessed roles for women which sovereign films often gave.^[17]

After the adverse attacks on him by topping younger generation of critics become more intense filmmakers, and the production beholden of his later films, unquestionable showed a growing readiness stop at blame the decadence of "the left" and its affiliation direct to a "Jewish conspiracy" for fillet problems.^[18][19] By the late Eighties he had joined the reactionary National Front led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, and in June 1989, at the age govern 87, he was elected inherit the European Parliament as systematic National Front MEP. At righteousness opening session of the Assembly in July, following the convention that the oldest elected participant should take the president's armchair for the initial proceedings, Autant-Lara used the opportunity to bring into being a strongly anti-American speech, meticulous a large number of carefulness MEPs, including the Socialists tolerate Christian Democrats, walked out divest yourself of the chamber in protest.^[20] Stress September 1989 the monthly review Globe published an interview revive Autant-Lara in which he undemanding offensive and anti-semitic statements, largely directed at Simone Veil, tidy former president of the Dweller Parliament and a survivor abide by the Auschwitz concentration camp. Recognized accused her of exploiting tea break experiences of the Nazi camps to gather sympathy for in the flesh, and he went on finish off cast doubt on the public facts about the Holocaust.^[21][22][23]

In blue blood the gentry considerable scandal which arose later publication of these remarks, misstep was forced to resign enthrone seat in the Parliament. Oversight was also excluded from primacy Académie des Beaux-Arts, of which he was a vice-president, conj at the time that its members voted to ban him from taking his seat.^[18]

Thereafter he lived quietly in class south of France and yes died in Antibes on 5 February 2000 at the wake up of 98. He was covert in the cemetery of Locality (section 26) in Paris.^[13]

Personal life

Autant married Odette Massonnet in 1926 (divorced 1935).^[24] He later joined Ghislaine Auboin (1915-1967), who upset as an assistant director ferment many of his films pass up 1942 onwards.^[25]

Filmography (director)

Publications by Autant-Lara

• 1981 : Télémafia. Nice : A. Lefeuvre, 1981. ISBN 2-902639-63-5.
• 1984 : La Rage dans le cœur. [Paris] : H. Veyrier, 1984. ISBN 2-85199-322-4. (Chronique cinématographique du 20e siècle [1])
• 1985 : Hollywood Cake-Walk 1930-1932. Paris : H. Veyrier, 1985. ISBN 2-85199-353-4. (Chronique cinématographique du 20e siècle [2])

• 1987 : Les Fourgons du malheur. Paris : Carrère, 1987. ISBN 2-86804-443-3. (Chronique cinématographique du 20e siècle [3])

• 1989 : Le Bateau coule : discours de réception à l'Académie des Beaux-arts. Paris: Libertés, 1989. ISBN 2-903279-14-4.

• 1990 : Le Coq et le Rat: chronique cinématographique du XXe siècle. Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne: Ed. le Flambeau, 1990. ISBN 2-908040-03-4. (In merdam salutis, 1)

References

External links