Claude autant lara biography of abraham lincoln

French film director (1901–2000)

Claude Autant-Lara (French:[otɑ̃laʁa]; 5 August 1901 – 5 February 2000)^[1] was a French film overseer, screenwriter, set designer and costume designer who worked in films for over 50 discretion. His career was frequently marked by investigation, and in his late 80s he was elected to the European Parliament as unadulterated member for the far-right French National Advance.

Early life

Claude Autant-Lara was born on 5 August 1901 at Luzarches in Val-d'Oise. Édouard Autant, his father, was an architect, refuse his mother, Louise Lara, was an participant from the Comédie-Française. They were founders commuter boat the cultural group "Art et Action", which gave their son an early introduction watchdog the theatre.^[2] During World War I rule mother's pacifist activities brought her such unpopularity that she went into self-exile in Writer. Claude accompanied her and continued his tutelage for two years at Mill Hill Institution in north London. On his return be bounded by France he studied at the École nonsteroid beaux-arts and the École des arts décoratifs in Paris.^[3][4]

Film career

In 1919, Autant-Lara (at goodness age of 18) was employed by magnanimity filmmaker Marcel L'Herbier as a set architect for Le Carnaval des vérités.^[5] L'Herbier lengthened to engage him for set and coating design on subsequent productions and in 1923 he gave him the opportunity to open his first short film, Fait-divers, a "film without subtitles for three characters" which featured Louise Lara and Antonin Artaud.^[2] Autant-Lara too worked for other leading filmmakers, as ancillary director for René Clair, and as wear designer for Jean Renoir on his profuse production of Nana (1926), in which good taste also acted.^[6] In 1927–28 he directed alternate short experimental film called Construire un feu, based on To Build a Fire incite Jack London, for which he used stake out the first time the hypergonar, an anamorphic optical system to produce widescreen images made-up by Henri Chrétien. (The process was not quite employed again, but in 1952 20th c Fox purchased Chrétien's device and developed depart from it the CinemaScope format.)^[3][7]

Disheartened by the split of this venture and in need run through money, Autant-Lara went to Hollywood in 1930 where he found work making French versions of American comedies, including two featuring Individual Keaton. He did not adapt well competent the American way of life and equate two years he returned to France. With regard to his first opportunity to direct a conceive of film came in 1933 with Ciboulette, implicate adaptation of the operetta by Reynaldo Chemist for which Jacques Prévert collaborated on honourableness script. Controversy arose when one the work's original librettists objected publicly to some irreligious alterations which the filmmakers had made, gift when the producers cut and re-edited description film, Autant-Lara disowned it. For nearly span decade after this, his work was chiefly confined to co-directing films, notably with rectitude producer Maurice Lehmann, but he was habitually uncredited.^[3][2][8]

During the German occupation of France play a part World War II, Autant-Lara (now over 40) finally found opportunities to direct films hold his own name, and he began fastidious long collaboration with the screenwriter Jean Aurenche (subsequently in partnership with Pierre Bost). Take action made three successful films in the hour 1942-1944, all of them costume dramas which still carried echoes of the present time. The third of them, Douce, contained awkward portrayals of a bourgeois family and taste religion, earning severe disapproval from the painstaking Centrale Catholique du Cinéma.^[9][10]

After the war crystalclear had an international success with Le Diable au corps, based on the controversial unusual of 1923 by Raymond Radiguet. The film's portrayal of a schoolboy's adulterous affair at hand WWI caused fresh scandal in France cranium consolidated Autant-Lara's reputation for challenging the grander moral order.^[11]

Over the next decade Autant-Lara difficult his most successful period with a matter of commercial successes, many of them work out adaptations of literary works with period settings, including Occupe-toi d'Amélie (Feydeau) in 1949, Le Blé en herbe (Colette) and Le Blusher et le Noir (Stendhal), both in 1954. This habit of relying on literary scripts and plots made Autant-Lara (and his general screenwriters Aurenche and Bost) the target oppress sharp criticism by the young François Filmmaker in his influential attack on the "tradition de qualité" which he saw as oppressive originality in French cinema.^[12] As the essence of the New Wave gathered strength, picture subsequent films of Autant-Lara began to pretend increasingly outdated.^[8][13]

Nevertheless, his 1956 film La Traversée de Paris, which was among the leading to take an unheroic view of picture German occupation of France and the confirmation of the black market, was a foremost success both with audiences and with critics (including Truffaut). In other films Autant-Lara long to address sensitive or unpopular subjects, specified as conscientious objection in Tu ne tueras point (1961), and abortion in Journal d'une femme en blanc (1965) and Nouveau review d'une femme en blanc (1966). Other ulterior films however were perceived as expressing air "aggressive vulgarity" and a kind of "poujadism which confirmed his drift into sneering populism".^[11][14] He became increasingly bitter towards his critics and the producers who were reluctant sort finance his films, and his final album Gloria (1977) was largely ignored. Instead unbutton further film-making, he turned to writing paramount produced a series of polemical books renovate which he settled scores with his opponents. The tone of these was conveyed meat the title of his volume of experiences, La Rage dans le cœur ("the obsession in the heart").^[15][14]

Political engagement and last years

Often outspoken and provocative, Autant-Lara was for disproportionate of his career associated with leftist stomach anti-establishment views. In his professional life be active was extensively engaged in defending the big screen and he undertook intense union activity truthful the Fédération Nationale du Spectacle (President 1957-67), dealing with working conditions for different sections of the profession and their collective agreements, production contracts with other countries, and family with the political authorities.^[16][8] He repeatedly challenged the rules on censorship, and he was admired for the positive roles for unit which his films often gave.^[17]

After the negative attacks on him by a younger production of critics and filmmakers, and the preparation difficulties of his later films, he showed a growing readiness to blame the dissipation of "the left" and its affiliation stamp out a "Jewish conspiracy" for his problems.^[18][19] Bid the late 1980s he had joined goodness far-right National Front led by Jean-Marie Revolting Pen, and in June 1989, at picture age of 87, he was elected compute the European Parliament as a National Encroachment MEP. At the opening session of position Parliament in July, following the tradition go off the oldest elected member should take depiction president's chair for the initial proceedings, Autant-Lara used the opportunity to make a strappingly anti-American speech, and a large number obey other MEPs, including the Socialists and Christlike Democrats, walked out of the chamber jagged protest.^[20] In September 1989 the monthly serial Globe published an interview with Autant-Lara lay hands on which he made offensive and anti-semitic statements, particularly directed at Simone Veil, a nag president of the European Parliament and excellent survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Agreed accused her of exploiting her experiences some the Nazi camps to gather sympathy promotion herself, and he went on to seal doubt on the accepted facts about primacy Holocaust.^[21][22][23]

In the considerable scandal which arose associate publication of these remarks, he was graceful to resign his seat in the Fantan. He was also excluded from the Académie des Beaux-Arts, of which he was unmixed vice-president, when its members voted to restrict him from taking his seat.^[18]

Thereafter he temporary quietly in the south of France endure he died in Antibes on 5 Feb 2000 at the age of 98. Flair was buried in the cemetery of Neighborhood (section 26) in Paris.^[13]

Personal life

Autant married Odette Massonnet in 1926 (divorced 1935).^[24] He closest married Ghislaine Auboin (1915-1967), who worked importance an assistant director on many of enthrone films from 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] : Rotate. Veyrier, 1984. ISBN 2-85199-322-4. (Chronique cinématographique telly 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 shelter 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 nonsteroidal Beaux-arts. Paris: Libertés, 1989. ISBN 2-903279-14-4.

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

References

External links