Claude Autant-Lara

Biography: life and films

Claude Autant-Lara was born on 6th August 1901 at Luzarches, Val-d'Oise, near Paris. His father was the architect, Edouard Autant, a friend of the sculptor Rodin, and his mother was Louise Lara, an actress of the prestigious Comédie Française. He was admitted to art school at the age of 16.

In 1919, he entered the film industry, working as a set designer for Marcel L'Herbier and René Clair. He spent most of the 1920s making his own experimental short films. The most ambitious of these was Construire un feu (1929), an adaptation of the Jack London novel about a gold prospector which used a revolutionary camera lens and projection system, a fore-runner of Cinemascope. The film was withdrawn when the owners of other cinemas complained that it created an unfair competitive advantage. This was to be the first in a long series of set backs and disappointments which would hamper Autant-Lara's career and poison his life.

Debt-ridden and bitter, Autant-Lara moved to Hollywood in the early 1930s, where he worked on French versions of American films (notably the Buster Keaton films). Having gained valuable experience, he returned to France a few years later and made his first full-length film Ciboulette (1933) - although the film suffered at the hands of its producers.

Ironically, Autant-Lara's only enduring success during the 1930s was Fric-Frac (1939), which he made in the shadow of his co-director, Maurice-Lehmann. The film was an adaptation of a popular stage play and starred Arletty, Michel Simon and Fernandel, three of the most popular actors of the day. It is, however, a film which is rarely associated with Autant-Lara.

Autant-Lara was only able to distinguish himself at the time of the Nazi occupation during World War Two, where he made his greatest films, including Le Mariage de chiffon (1942) and Douce (1943), both scathing satires on the class system in France.

After the war, Autant-Lara quickly gained a reputation as a dangerous anarchist, and critics and public were quick to condemn his films for their anti-state content. Ironically, this was at a time when the director was actively engaged in promoting French cinema against the threat of what he saw as Hollywood imperialism, and also rebelling against all forms of censorship. Autant-Lara was a hot-headed crusader, but he had few friends and an army of enemies.

Despite a favourable response from film critics, Le Diable au corps (1947) was condemned as being anti-French. The seemingly trivial farce L'Auberge Rouge (1951) was described as a blatant attack on the Church, whilst Le Blé en herbe (1953) was seen as excessively anti-bourgeois. Even La Traversée de Paris (1956), one of Autant-Lara's best films, intended merely as an attack on cowardice, met with a barrage of criticism. And the furore which followed En cas de malheur (1958), a film in which an ageing Jean Gabin had an extra-marital affair with a woman less than half his age (that woman being Brigitte Bardot) was of course inevitable.

Perhaps the most vociferous attack which Autant-Lara faced in the 1950s came from the young film critic François Truffaut and his cohorts at the Cahiers du cinéma. Truffaut lambasted Autant-Lara for his adherence to traditional method of film direction, which placed the director in a subordinate position in relation to his script-writer and actors. Of all the assaults which Autant-Lara received, this was to be the one which hurt him most, and he squandered a great deal of energy challenging Truffaut and the other New Wave directors.

Bruised but not beaten, Autant-Lara continued making controversial films, including Tu ne tueras point (1961), a film about conscientious objectors which was banned in France on account of the war with Algeria. His two films relating two abortion, Le Journal d'une femme en blanc (1965) and Le Nouveau Journal d'une femme en blanc (1966), were only marginally less controversial. In addition, Autant-Lara adapted several literary works for television, including Stendhal's Lucien Leuwen (1973).

In 1984, Autant-Lara published his memoirs, “La rage dans le coeur”, a title fitting his state of mind. By this time, the director had become an intensely bitter man, incapable of moderating his extreme views.

At the end of the 1980s, Autant-Lara's career took an unexpected turn when he championed the cause of extreme right-wing politics. An outspoken supporter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, he managed to win a seat on the European Parliament for the National Front Party. However, he was forced to resign the seat when he expressed extreme xenaphobic views during an interview in 1989. After a long illness, Claude Autant-Lara died on 5th Februray 2000 at Antibles in the south of France.

Filmography

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