Claude Autant-Lara

05.08.1901, Luzarches, France - 05.02.2000, Antibes, France

 

Director
Autant-Lara, originally from France, moved to England during WW I due to his mother’s strong pacifist viewpoints. He returned to France in 1919 and studied art. He began working on film as a set and costume designer. For some time he worked as an assistant director to Marcel L\'Herbier and René Claire. He made his directing debut with the silent surreal short film Fait-divers (1923), and in 1933 directed his first sound feature film, Ciboulette. His films got more attention during German occupation of France. He had much international success with his film Le diable au corps (Devil in the Flesh, 1947). His other important films include Le mariage de chiffon (1941), Douce (Love Story, 1943), Sylvie et le fantôme (Sylvia and the Ghost , 1946), L\' auberge rouge (The Red Inn, 1951), Le rouge et le noir (The Red and the Black, 1954), La traversée de Paris (Pigs Across Paris, 1956), En cas de malheur (In Case of Adversity, 1958). From the mid 1950s he was criticized by representatives of the French New wave and his films were less popular. He made his last film, Gloria, in 1977. Afterwards he a member of the European parliament but was forced to resign after his anti-Semitic statements about nonexistence of the Holocaust.

Filmography


Films by this director

Le mariage de chiffon

(1941)

Directed by: Claude Autant-Lara
PHOTOGRAPHY: Philippe Agostini, Jean Isnard
Synopsis:

Chiffon is the nickname of an untamable young woman suffocated by the conventions of her aristocratic origin. Her mother, marquise de Bray, forces Chiffon to marry a rich lieutenant who she met at a train station. Secretly Chiffon wants to be with the poor pilot who happens to be her uncle. She has to choose between the man she loves and one that her mother has chosen for her…

b/w, 35mm, 103 min

Love Story

(Douce, 1943)

Directed by: Claude Autant-Lara
PHOTOGRAPHY: Philippe Agostini
Synopsis:

The story takes place in Paris in 1887. Through love relationships we follow the decay of the aristocratic family de Bonafé. Douce is the young granddaughter of Countess Bonafé and she is in love with the much poorer Fabien. This gains her the disapproval of her family even though Douce’s father longs after her nanny, Irčne, who is also in love with Fabien.

b/w, 35mm, 104 min

Devil in the Flesh

(Le diable au corps, 1947.)

Directed by: Claude Autant-Lara
PHOTOGRAPHY: Michel Kelber
Synopsis:

Za vrijeme Prvog svjetskog rata upoznaju se devetnaestogodišnja Marthe i sedamnaestogodišnji François. Ona radi kao medicinska sestra i pod pritiskom je roditelja koji žele da se uda. François se zaljubljuje u nju, no njegovo nezrelo ponašanje je ubrzo odbije te se ona zaručuje za vojnika koji se sprema na frontu. Kada se ponovno sretnu nakon njezina vjenčanja François i Marthe nastavljaju vezu, ali s tragičnim posljedicama.

digital, b/w, 110 min
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