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.
