A01=Christine Leteux
Alfred Greven
Author_Christine Leteux
Caprices Affair
Carnival of Sinners
Category=ATFA
Category=NHD
Category=NHWR7
Decoin
Difficult Years
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
European film
film history
French film
German Occupation
Harry Baur Affair
Henri-Georges Clouzot
La Main du diable
La Vie de plaisir
Le Corbeau
Les Annees difficiles
Les Inconnus dans la maison
Life of Pleasure
Maurice Tourneur
Richard Pottier
Strangers in the House
The Raven
Vichy France
WWII
Product details
- ISBN 9780299339807
- Weight: 239g
- Dimensions: 153 x 231mm
- Publication Date: 29 Nov 2022
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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From 1940 to 1944, the German-owned Continental Films dominated the French film landscape, producing thirty features throughout the Nazi occupation. Charged with producing entertaining and profitable films rather than propaganda, producer Alfred Greven employed some of the greatest French actors and most prestigious directors of the time, including Maurice Tourneur, Henri Decoin, Henri-Georges Clouzot, and Marcel CarnÉ.
Using recently opened archival documents, including reams of testimony from the Épuration (purification) hearings conducted shortly after the war, Christine Leteux has produced the most authoritative and complete history of the company and its impact on the French film industry—both during the war and after. She captures the wide range of responses to the firm from those who were eager to work for a company whose ideology matched their own, to others who reluctantly accepted contracts out of necessity, to those who abhorred the company but felt compelled to participate in order to protect family members from Nazi reprisals. She examines not only the formation and management of Continental Films but also the personalities involved, the fraught and often deadly political circumstances of the period, the critical reception of the films, and many of the more notorious and controversial events.
As Bertrand Tavernier explains in his foreword, Leteux overturns many of the preconceptions and clichÉs that have come to be associated with Continental Films. Published to rave reviews in French and translated by the author into English, this work shatters expectations and will reinvigorate study of a lesser-known but significant period of French film history.
Using recently opened archival documents, including reams of testimony from the Épuration (purification) hearings conducted shortly after the war, Christine Leteux has produced the most authoritative and complete history of the company and its impact on the French film industry—both during the war and after. She captures the wide range of responses to the firm from those who were eager to work for a company whose ideology matched their own, to others who reluctantly accepted contracts out of necessity, to those who abhorred the company but felt compelled to participate in order to protect family members from Nazi reprisals. She examines not only the formation and management of Continental Films but also the personalities involved, the fraught and often deadly political circumstances of the period, the critical reception of the films, and many of the more notorious and controversial events.
As Bertrand Tavernier explains in his foreword, Leteux overturns many of the preconceptions and clichÉs that have come to be associated with Continental Films. Published to rave reviews in French and translated by the author into English, this work shatters expectations and will reinvigorate study of a lesser-known but significant period of French film history.
