‘Impatience and revolt’ in the fine films of occupied France

Bertrand Tavernier may be one of the world’s great directors, but at the moment, looking rather out of place in one of those mercilessly hip Hollywood hotels, he’s simply a movie lover, or more specifically, a French movie lover. The courtly, soft-spoken maker of “A Sunday in the Country,” “ ‘Round Midnight” and “Coup de Torchon” sits literally on the edge of his seat leaning forward, urging his visitor to spread the word about a group of movies he particularly reveres.

Most were made when Tavernier was an infant, during the World War II German occupation of France, dark days that gave rise to a succession of remarkable French films. Twenty-two of these will screen over the next month for “French Cinema and the Occupation” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art -- seven selected by Tavernier.

“It was a very difficult time,” Tavernier, 64, says of the war years. After the German army marched into France in the spring of 1940, the country was separated into two regions -- the densely populated occupied zone in the north, ruthlessly controlled by the Nazis, and in the south, a so-called “free zone,” established under a collaborationist government headquartered in Vichy.

Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda meister, sent German film executive Alfred Greven to Paris to establish Continental Studios, which would quickly become the country’s main supplier of films. Greven fascinates Tavernier, who made him a pivotal character in “Safe Conduct,” his 2002 drama, which closes the LACMA program.

“Goebbels,” he says, “wanted Greven to produce films which were harmless ... without any content. And yet Greven did not follow. He produced films which were very strong, very dark.” Throwing his hands open wide, Tavernier wonders, “Why?”

Tavernier’s interest in such questions is clearly fueled by the films, which are so good that their existence may qualify as the greatest mystery of all. “Children of Paradise,” “Le Corbeau,” “Le Marriage de Chiffon,” “Douce” -- how did so many “masterpieces,” to use Tavernier’s word, come from a time of fear and oppression? French filmmakers were dealing with the same daily terrors as their fellow citizens, and yet many managed to create films that are, as Tavernier puts it, “Moving, funny, demanding. Made by people fighting with intelligence instead of submitting to stupidity.”

There is admiration in Tavernier’s voice when discussing the provocative “Le Corbeau,” about a provincial town whose residents begin receiving anonymous letters revealing secrets that ultimately turn neighbor against neighbor. But one senses a deeper stirring in his response to “Douce,” the 1943 love story directed by Claude Autant-Lara and written by Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost. “It is the first real collaboration between Bost and Aurenche,” he continues, “who are going to write many masterpieces in French cinema -- ‘Forbidden Games’ and ‘The Devil in the Flesh.’ It also has that scene where a woman visits the poor family and as she’s leaving says, ‘I wish you patience and resignation,’ which are words [Vichy leader] Marshall Petain played on the radio for years. And the guy with her says, ‘You had better wish them impatience and revolt.’ ”

Tavernier leans forward, his eyebrows arcing up. “Imagine. The word ‘revolt’ in a film in 1942.”

“When I discovered the film,” he says, “I decided I wanted to work with the people who’d written that line. I wanted to know them.” That quest led directly to Bost and Aurenche, who came to write “The Clockmaker,” Tavernier’s first film, made in 1973. And a Bost novel formed the basis for what is arguably Tavernier’s masterpiece, “A Sunday in the Country.”

Bost died in 1975, but Tavernier and Aurenche continued working together for nearly 20 years, until Aurenche’s 1992 death, writing books and screenplays -- including the blistering “Coup de Torchon” -- in a fusion of friendship and art that embodies the best of that very complex word, “collaboration.”

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French Cinema and the Occupation

Where: Bing Theatre, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: Friday through June 4

Price: $9; $6 for museum and AFI members, seniors (62 and older), and students with valid identification

Contact: (323) 857-6010, or www.lacma.org