Talk:Bernard Natan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
A fact from Bernard Natan appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 5 January 2008. |
 |
I'm moving the following text from the article because it wasn't sourced or wikiformatted. I'm sure it's factually correct but it needs to be worked into the article better.--Sus scrofa 02:59, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Bernard Natan was born on 14 July 1886 in Jassy (Romania). In 1906, at the age of 20 he emigrated to France where he developed a passion for cinema. After working as a projectionist in a cinema in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, he set up a small company called Ciné-Actualités with a small capital (30,000 francs). He produced several films, including “L’Adjudant Grinchepi” and “A nous le pôle” which have not survived. In December 1910 he suffered in the wave of prudishness driven by Senator Béranger. He was then prosecuted (along with several others) and given a four-month prison sentence for “affront to public decency” for the production of films in which he himself had acted. It is not known whether these films were truly pornographic, or simply risqué, the sort that all film companies of the time regularly produced. This indiscretion committed at the age of twenty-six would regularly be exploited in defamatory campaigns against him in the 1930s and under the Occupation. More surprisingly, however, a myth created a decade or so ago would present him as the main producer of pornographic films in France from 1922; such a portrayal is clearly absurd.
In 1912 he created a new company, Rapid-Film, which over the years would become a film laboratory and an important film processing studio. At the same time, he created Rapid-Publicité, to supply publicity films which were shown in cinemas in the intervals. He also produced several documentary films, and notably won exclusive rights to film the 1924 Olympic Games.
This activity was interrupted by the First World War. Despite being Romanian, Natan enlisted for the duration of the war, and was discharged in 1918 with the Military Cross and the rank of sergeant.
From 1919 he was finally able to throw himself into film production. On the premises of the “Grands bazars du bâtiment” in Rue Francœur, of which he occupied at first a few hundred square metres and then all six thousand square metres of the building, he built two film studios which were opened with great ceremony.
He set up Productions Natan and went on to produce many films. Bernard Natan was a success. He was vice-President of the Chambre Syndicale de la Cinématographie. In 1929, with the help of the Bauer and Marchal bank, he bought, for the sum of 50 million francs, shares held by Charles Pathé and his associates in the Pathé Cinéma company. Before the war, this had been the largest film company in the world, but it had been deliberately dismantled by its founder who felt that the struggle was impossible in the face of American competition. Bernard Natan rebuilt the company from an empty shell. He bought the Joinville studios and Pathé Consortium’s distribution system from Cinéromans. He acquired a network of more than sixty cinemas (and a hundred “associated” cinemas) in Paris, the rest of France and Belgium. He relaunched the production of films which had been abandoned by Pathé Cinéma at the beginning of the decade, and equipped the company for talking pictures. He relaunched Pathé Journal, which had been abandoned in 1926, and adapted it for sound newsreels. He also developed Pathé Rural. With an eye on the future, other steps included buying Baird television patents and the patents for Professor Chrétien’s Hypergonar (the precursor of CinemaScope).
Within eighteen months, Pathé Natan had become the largest film company in France. This attracted the interest of financial groups who were keen to take over a thriving company. A smear campaign began in 1932 and intensified in 1935 in an atmosphere of strong xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Eventually, receivers moved in and were quick to bankrupt the Pathé Natan venture and by extension the parent company. In fact, however, the company continued to pursue its activity profitably under receivership, and then under a development company created for this purpose by a syndicate run by the Thomson Houston company. In 1943, the bankruptcy came to an end as the company was able to pay its creditors and bond-holders with interest on arrears.
An employee of Thomson Houston, Adrien Remaugé, was appointed as director of the “Société nouvelle Pathé Cinéma”.
Meanwhile, in December 1938, Bernard Natan was prosecuted for various irregularities. He was arrested and sentenced to four then five years in prison without any evidence of accrued personal wealth. As the victim of new proceedings under the Occupation, he was stripped of his French nationality and handed over to the German authorities who deported him on 25 September 1942 on Convoy No. 37 to Auschwitz, where he would die.
Even after Natan was dead, the legend of the swindler who squandered Charles Pathé’s fortune would endure, although in fact he had revived a previously dismantled company. Many books on cinema still contain evidence of slander towards Natan.
Bibliography:
André Rossel-Kirschen: Pathé Natan, la véritable histoire, 2004, Editions Pilote 24 / Les Indépendants du 1 er siècle.
Website of Indépendants du 1 er siècle: www.lips.org: biography and filmography of Bernard Natan.
On the same site: www.lips.org: “Droit de réponse: mise au point sur le grand producteur Bernard Natan” / “Right to reply: Answering Dr Joseph W. Slade’s fantasies and slander on Bernard Natan ‘France’s legendary Pornographer’.
- I replaced the old version of this text with a newer version, which includes the Bibliography. It's copied from User:Rossel-kirschen, which is now to be deleted. Placeholder account 04:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Rewritten article; use of French-language sources
This article has been completely rewritten to eliminate any possible copyright infringement. Several French language sources were used, primarily to document Natan's involvement with Pathé. Very little on the history of Pathé has been published in English. Most English sources contain only broad description's of Natan's stewardship of Pathé. I was forced to use French-language sources because they were the most detailed and best-sourced. - Tim1965 (talk) 15:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] The End of NOR
I know that we have a policy of No Original Research, but when the article says Natan was "freed" in 1942 and then the very next sentence says that he was handed over to German occupiers and sent to Auschwitz... if that is freedom, I want none of it! Despite whatever wording exists in the sources, we should not euphemize his transfer to Nazi authorities only to correct this in the next sentence. Not having read the sources, I wouldn't have a suggestion what to substitute here, unless I'm permitted to think outside of the NOR box. ClaudeReigns (talk) 15:43, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Sexuality?
Is there a source for Natan being bisexual? Could it be included? I see that he often participated is bisexual scenes for his movies, but that's just sex. What about his personal life - did he have a boyfriend? Girlfriend? Lovers? -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 15:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
- The Thomas Waugh book claims he is bisexual, and lays out an argument for him being homosexual. The Slade article outright asserts, without evidence, that he was bisexual. Natan never married, and no mention in any articles or sources I read discussed his dating or sex life. - Tim1965 (talk) 17:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
- The affirmations from Slade and Waugh have been completely refuted and pulled to pieces by french historians and specialists. See here. Actually, Bernard Natan married Marie-Louise Chatillon and had two children. At best, Natan as a pornographer is a hypothesis still in need of proofs. --Surréalatino (talk) 13:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
