Claude Autant-Lara

Claude Autant-Lara (August 5, 1901, Luzarches, Val-d’Oise - February 5, 2000, Antibes, Alpes-Maritimes), was a French film director and later MEP.

He was educated in France and at London's Mill Hill School during his mother's exile as a pacifist. Early in his career, he worked as an art director and costume designer, his best known work in this vein was possibly for Nana (1926), a silent film directed by Jean Renoir. Autant-Lara also acted in the film.

As a director, he frequently created provocative movies, saying "if a film does not have venom, it is worthless". In the 1960s, he turned his back on the New Wave movement, and from then on he had no popular successes.

On 18 June 1989, he came to public notice again, controversially, when he was elected to the European Parliament as a member of the National Front and the oldest member of the assembly. In his maiden speech, in July, he caused a scandal by expressing his "concerns about the American cultural threat", provoking a walkout by the majority of the deputies.

In an interview granted to the monthly magazine Globe in September 1989, he engaged in what Minister of Justice Pierre Arpaillange referred to as "racial insults, racial slandering and incitements to racial hatred". He also described Nazi gas chambers as a "string of lies". The resulting scandal led to his resignation as European deputy. Moreover, the members of the Academy of the Fine Arts, of which he was a vice-president for life, voted to prohibit him from taking his seat thenceforth.

His memoir, The Rage in the Heart, appeared in 1984.

Filmography (director)

• 1928 : Construire un feu
• 1933 : Ciboulette
• 1937 : L'Affaire du courrier de Lyon (co-directed with Maurice Lehmann)
• 1939 : Fric-Frac
• 1942 : Le Mariage de chiffon
• 1942 : Lettres d'amour
• 1943 : Douce
• 1945 : Sylvie et le fantôme
• 1947 : Le Diable au corps
• 1949 : Occupe-toi d'Amélie
• 1951 : L'Auberge rouge [also screenwriter]
• 1952 : The Seven Deadly Sins [also screenwriter]
• 1953 : Le Blé en herbe
• 1953 : Le Bon Dieu sans confession [also screenwriter]
• 1954 : Le Rouge et le noir
• 1955 : Marguerite de la nuit
• 1956 : La Traversée de Paris
• 1958 : Le Joueur
• 1959 : En cas de malheur
• 1959 : La Jument verte
• 1960 : Tu ne tueras point
• 1961 : Le Comte de Monte-Cristo
• 1961 : Vive Henri IV... vive l'amour! ... aka Long Live Henry IV... Long Live Love (USA: literal English title)
• 1963 : Le Meurtrier
• 1964 : Le Magot de Josefa
• 1965 : Le Journal d'une femme en blanc
• 1967 : Le Plus vieux métier du monde
• 1967 : Le Franciscain de Bourges
• 1969 : Les Patates
• 1977 : Gloria

In 1973 he adapted Stendhal's Lucien Leuwen for television.

In addition, he was director of at least five other films produced between 1923 and 1936.

References

This article is based on the equivalent French-language wikipedia article (retrieved November 30, 2005).

External links

• Claude Autant-Lara at the Internet Movie Database