Roel Vande Winkel, Ghent / Brett Bowles, Albany

Reassessing Alfred Greven and the Export of German Cinema

Alfred Greven (1897-1973) is known to film scholars primarily for his role as the head of Continental Films, production company that made thirty French-language feature films in occupied Paris between 1940 and 1944.  Unlike most other German-produced films for the French market, Continental’s output did not serve any overt propagandistic function.  Supported by generous funding from UFA and priority access to key material resources (the Billancourt studios, an exclusive theater on the Champs-Elysées, and distribution through the Alliance Cinématographique Européenne), these pictures are recognized as having achieved a successful fusion of German organizational skills and French artistic talent, as exemplified by Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece Le Corbeau (1943).
Yet Greven’s work at Continental represents only a small segment of his career, for he began working in the film industry around 1920 and would continue producing films in Germany after 1945.  During the war Greven played a key role in reorganizing the film industries not only in France, but in Belgium and Holland as well. In this capacity, his influence over the Reich’s film export policies was equal to and in some cases greater than that of Goebbels.
Drawing on previously unexploited archival documents, our paper reassesses the cultural, economic, and ideological impact of Greven’s wartime activities as an international emissary of German film and resituates those activities within the overall arc of his career, thereby stressing the continuities between the late Weimar period, the Third Reich, and the post-war years.