Claude Autant-Lara

Left-leaning director who established himself in the 1940s with a string of impressive films including "Lettres d'amour" (1942), the wistful fantasy "Sylvie et la Fantome" (1945), and the superb first screen adaptation of Raymond Radiguet's "Devil in the Flesh" (1947). Though some of Autant-Lara's later works appeared traditional and a bit dated alongside those of the New Wave, the criticism of his whole body of work by that generation of filmmakers seems in retrospect to be somewhat unjust. Autant-Lara's own career had in fact begun with a series of avant-garde shorts, including "Construire un feu" (1926), the first film to achieve a "widescreen" effect through the use of an anamorphic lens.