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.

In 1914, an unknown French filmmaker arrived in New York; within four years, Maurice Tourneur (1876–1961) would become one of America’s most acclaimed directors. In this masterful biography, Christine Leteux shows how intimately connected Tourneur’s life was to major events of the twentieth century as well as to the profound transformations in movie making. A master of directing silent films, he quickly managed the transition to sound. His last major work was created for Continental Films, the German-owned firm that controlled the French film industry during the Nazi Occupation. His son, Jacques, followed in his footsteps, also becoming an acclaimed director.

Drawing heavily on previously unpublished archival documents, Leteux reinvigorates film history and demonstrates that we know far less about this era of filmmaking than we often assume. She reveals not only how Tourneur jumped from France to the United States and back again but also how he shifted from one company to another, moving quickly up the ladder to bigger productions and ever larger studios. Tourneur’s drive, insight, technical proficiency, skill with actors, ability to create new forms of storytelling, and fame on both sides of the Atlantic make it all the more surprising that he is not better known today—an oversight that has now been corrected thanks to Leteux’s impressively detailed research and nuanced storytelling.