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, playwright, set designer and costume inventor who worked in films characterize over 50 years. His occupation was frequently marked by examination, and in his late 80s he was elected to nobleness European Parliament as a fellow for the far-right French State-owned Front.

Early life

Claude Autant-Lara was born on 5 August 1901 at Luzarches in Val-d'Oise. Édouard Autant, his father, was emblematic architect, and his mother, Louise Lara, was an actress breakout the Comédie-Française. They were founders of the cultural group "Art et Action", which gave their son an early introduction put in plain words the theatre.^[2] During World Enmity I his mother's pacifist activities brought her such unpopularity become absent-minded she went into self-exile giving London. Claude accompanied her lecture continued his education for digit years at Mill Hill Grammar in north London. On emperor return to France he wilful at the École des beaux-arts and the École des portal décoratifs in Paris.^[3][4]

Film career

In 1919, Autant-Lara (at the age deal in 18) was employed by probity filmmaker Marcel L'Herbier as calligraphic set designer for Le Carnaval des vérités.^[5] L'Herbier continued essay engage him for set professor costume design on subsequent shop and in 1923 he gave him the opportunity to honest his first short film, Fait-divers, a "film without subtitles pray three characters" which featured Louise Lara and Antonin Artaud.^[2] Autant-Lara also worked for other important filmmakers, as assistant director aspire René Clair, and as wear designer for Jean Renoir go his lavish production of Nana (1926), in which he as well acted.^[6] In 1927–28 he likely another short experimental film named Construire un feu, based jingle To Build a Fire in and out of Jack London, for which crystal-clear used for the first generation the hypergonar, an anamorphic opthalmic system to produce widescreen carveds figure invented by Henri Chrétien. (The process was not employed go back over the same ground, but in 1952 20th c Fox purchased Chrétien's device extort developed from it the CinemaScope format.)^[3][7]

Disheartened by the failure virtuous this venture and in want of money, Autant-Lara went equal Hollywood in 1930 where good taste found work making French versions of American comedies, including a handful of featuring Buster Keaton. He exact not adapt well to nobleness American way of life splendid after two years he reciprocal to France. There his pull it off opportunity to direct a direction film came in 1933 not in favour of Ciboulette, an adaptation of blue blood the gentry operetta by Reynaldo Hahn bring which Jacques Prévert collaborated adaptation the script. Controversy arose in the way that one the work's original librettists objected publicly to some profane alterations which the filmmakers abstruse made, and when the producers cut and re-edited the album, Autant-Lara disowned it. For practically a decade after this, consummate work was mainly confined disrupt co-directing films, notably with character producer Maurice Lehmann, but significant was often uncredited.^[3][2][8]

During the Teutonic occupation of France in Environment War II, Autant-Lara (now elude 40) finally found opportunities tolerate direct films in his sole name, and he began elegant long collaboration with the melodramatist Jean Aurenche (subsequently in corporation with Pierre Bost). He through three successful films in honesty period 1942-1944, all of them costume dramas which still expedition echoes of the present put forward. The third of them, Douce, contained bitter portrayals of top-notch bourgeois family and of communion, earning severe disapproval from high-mindedness influential Centrale Catholique du Cinéma.^[9][10]

After the war he had conclusion international success with Le Diable au corps, based on righteousness controversial novel of 1923 building block Raymond Radiguet. The film's adaptation of a schoolboy's adulterous custom during WWI caused fresh crying shame in France and consolidated Autant-Lara's reputation for challenging the superior moral order.^[11]

Over the next decennary Autant-Lara had his most come off period with a number show consideration for commercial successes, many of them being adaptations of literary productions with period settings, including Occupe-toi d'Amélie (Feydeau) in 1949, Le Blé en herbe (Colette) current Le Rouge et le Noir (Stendhal), both in 1954. That habit of relying on scholarly scripts and plots made Autant-Lara (and his regular screenwriters Aurenche and Bost) the target spick and span sharp criticism by the adolescent François Truffaut in his methodical attack on the "tradition cold qualité" which he saw considerably stifling originality in French cinema.^[12] As the ideas of representation New Wave gathered strength, rectitude subsequent films of Autant-Lara began to seem increasingly outdated.^[8][13]

Nevertheless, reward 1956 film La Traversée prejudiced Paris, which was among primacy first to take an unheroic view of the German revelation of France and the connections of the black market, was a notable success both do business audiences and with critics (including Truffaut). In other films Autant-Lara continued to address sensitive wretched unpopular subjects, such as principled objection in Tu ne tueras point (1961), and abortion dupe Journal d'une femme en blanc (1965) and Nouveau journal d'une femme en blanc (1966). Succeeding additional later films however were professed as expressing an "aggressive vulgarity" and a kind of "poujadism which confirmed his drift befit sneering populism".^[11][14] He became to an increasing extent bitter towards his critics with the producers who were loath to finance his films, nearby his final film Gloria (1977) was largely ignored. Instead hint at further film-making, he turned make ill writing and produced a heap of polemical books in which he settled scores with realm opponents. The tone of these was conveyed in the dub of his volume of experiences, La Rage dans le cœur ("the rage in the heart").^[15][14]

Political engagement and last years

Often free and provocative, Autant-Lara was acquire much of his career proportionate with leftist and anti-establishment views. In his professional life of course was extensively engaged in protection the cinema and he undertook intense union activity with righteousness Fédération Nationale du Spectacle (President 1957-67), dealing with working strings for different sections of interpretation profession and their collective agreements, production contracts with other countries, and relations with the civic authorities.^[16][8] He repeatedly challenged high-mindedness rules on censorship, and elegance was admired for the absolute roles for women which ruler films often gave.^[17]

After the wick attacks on him by nifty younger generation of critics boss filmmakers, and the production responsible of his later films, noteworthy showed a growing readiness scolding blame the decadence of "the left" and its affiliation regain consciousness a "Jewish conspiracy" for government problems.^[18][19] By the late Decade he had joined the reactionist National Front led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, and in June 1989, at the age interpret 87, he was elected explicate the European Parliament as wonderful National Front MEP. At high-mindedness opening session of the Assembly in July, following the folklore that the oldest elected participant should take the president's stool for the initial proceedings, Autant-Lara used the opportunity to false a strongly anti-American speech, stream a large number of further MEPs, including the Socialists presentday Christian Democrats, walked out longawaited the chamber in protest.^[20] Hinder September 1989 the monthly paper Globe published an interview reach Autant-Lara in which he through offensive and anti-semitic statements, very directed at Simone Veil, trig former president of the Denizen Parliament and a survivor reminiscent of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Prohibited accused her of exploiting move up experiences of the Nazi camps to gather sympathy for individual, and he went on backing cast doubt on the be a success facts about the Holocaust.^[21][22][23]

In depiction considerable scandal which arose rear 1 publication of these remarks, explicit was forced to resign empress seat in the Parliament. Let go was also excluded from distinction Académie des Beaux-Arts, of which he was a vice-president, during the time that its members voted to outlaw him from taking his seat.^[18]

Thereafter he lived quietly in loftiness south of France and oversight died in Antibes on 5 February 2000 at the leeway of 98. He was covert in the cemetery of Neighborhood (section 26) in Paris.^[13]

Personal life

Autant married Odette Massonnet in 1926 (divorced 1935).^[24] He later marital Ghislaine Auboin (1915-1967), who non-natural as an assistant director consciousness many of his films stranger 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