Claude Autant-Lara

Claude Autant-Lara

Born: August 5, 1901
Died: February 5, 2000
in Luzarches, Val-d'Oise, France
Claude Autant-Lara was a French film director and later Member of the European Parliament (MEP).

Born at Luzarches in Val-d'Oise, Autant-Lara 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 1989, 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 accused ex-President of the European Parliament and Holocaust survivor Simone Veil of playing "ethnic politics" to try and "infiltrate and dominate", saying that "If they try to speak to me about genocide, I say they missed mother Veil!" 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 Académie des Beaux-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. He died at Antibes in Alpes-Maritimes in 2000.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Movies for Claude Autant-Lara...

My Name Is Anna Magnani
Title: My Name Is Anna Magnani
Character: Self
Released: September 30, 1980
Type: Movie
Traces the life of Anna Magnani, her creations, her successes, her triumphs, her boycotted career, her nonconformism, her anxieties, her generosity ... Punctuated with photos that tell her career in theater and cinema, Extracts of films, this documentary portrait also gives the floor to his friends and relatives, from Roberto Rossellini to Marcello Mastroianni, through Federico Fellini.
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Title: Les Rendez-vous du dimanche
Character: Self
Released: January 12, 1975
Type: TV
A talk show presented by Michel Drucker
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Title: Spécial cinéma
Character: Self
Released: September 25, 1974
Type: TV
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Title: Cinépanorama
Character: Self
Released: February 4, 1956
Type: TV
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Nana
Title: Nana
Character: Fauchery
Released: June 25, 1926
Type: Movie
Count Moffat becomes infatuated with Nana, a presumptuous stage actress, vulgar, hypocritical and promiscuous, willing to do anything to succeed.
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The Man of the Sea
Title: The Man of the Sea
Character: Un des copains (uncredited)
Released: December 3, 1920
Type: Movie
Nolff, a tough Breton fisherman is happy: his wife has just given birth to a son, Michel. His only wish is to make him a fisherman like him. But when he becomes a man, Michel becomes a good-for-nothing who spends his time in taverns.