[6] In 1927–28 he directed another short experimental film called Construire un feu, based on To Build a Fire by Jack London, for which he used for the first time the hypergonar, an anamorphic optical system to produce widescreen images invented by Henri Chrétien.

Controversy arose when one the work's original librettists objected publicly to some irreverent alterations which the filmmakers had made, and when the producers cut and re-edited the film, Autant-Lara disowned it.

[3][2] [8] During the German occupation of France in World War II, Autant-Lara (now over 40) finally found opportunities to direct films in his own name, and he began a long collaboration with the screenwriter Jean Aurenche (subsequently in partnership with Pierre Bost).

This habit of relying on literary scripts and plots made Autant-Lara (and his regular screenwriters Aurenche and Bost) the target of sharp criticism by the young François Truffaut in his influential attack on the "tradition de qualité" which he saw as stifling originality in French cinema.

[8][13] Nevertheless, his 1956 film La Traversée de Paris, which was among the first to take an unheroic view of the German occupation of France and the operation of the black market, was a notable success both with audiences and with critics (including Truffaut).

In his professional life he was extensively engaged in defending the cinema and he undertook intense union activity with the Fédération Nationale du Spectacle (President 1957-67), dealing with working conditions for different sections of the profession and their collective agreements, production contracts with other countries, and relations with the political authorities.

[17] After the damaging attacks on him by a younger generation of critics and filmmakers, and the production difficulties of his later films, he showed a growing readiness to blame the decadence of "the left" and its affiliation to a "Jewish conspiracy" for his problems.

At the opening session of the Parliament in July, following the tradition that the oldest elected member should take the president's chair for the initial proceedings, Autant-Lara used the opportunity to make a strongly anti-American speech, and a large number of other MEPs, including the Socialists and Christian Democrats, walked out of the chamber in protest.

[20] In September 1989 the monthly magazine Globe published an interview with Autant-Lara in which he made offensive and anti-semitic statements, particularly directed at Simone Veil, a former president of the European Parliament and a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.