But whereas in Vichy there was official collaboration, in Paris the ideological collaboration, entertaining the enemy, was becoming more nuanced and complex. In August Premier Rendez-Vous starring Danielle Darrieux became the first successful film of the Occupation produced by Continental Studios, the German-financed film company based in Paris. Continental, set up by Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels to give the Germans control over the French film industry, produced thirty full-length films between 1941 and 1944, including some of exceptionally high quality such as Le Corbeau and Au Bonheur des dames. Almost all were recorded at the Paris Studios Cinema in Billancourt, and several renowned directors worked for the company. The intention was partly to rival Hollywood, as no American films could be shown during the Occupation, and partly, as with fashion and opera, to demonstrate German superiority not only militarily but culturally. Darrieux remarked later that she remembered these years as a time when she was ‘totally carefree’, when she and her actress friends would have their ‘feet done’ and ‘go to the beauty parlour all the time’, a clear indication that Corinne Luchaire was not alone among actresses and performers who had failed, or refused, to realize the gravity of their situation and believed that entertaining was in some ways different.
It was one thing to perform on a French stage but quite another to perform in Germany. From 1941 Goebbels was constantly trying to organize visits by artists to Germany. The first such propaganda trip, a three-week junket touring the country, included Abel Bonnard, Robert Brasillach and Marcel Jouhandeau, the writer admired by Irène Némirovsky (admittedly before he had published in 1938 his notorious pamphlet Le Péril juif). Yet even Jouhandeau was not without doubts and wrote about the trip in his diary: ‘Why am I here? Because from the time I knew how to read, understand and feel, I have loved Germany, her philosophers, her musicians, and I think that nothing could serve humanity better than our understanding with her.’ As Jean Guéhenno commented acidly: ‘The species of the man of letters is not one of the greatest of human species. Incapable of surviving for long in hiding, he would sell his soul to see his name in print.’
Yet Jouhandeau was now beyond the reach of Némirovsky, living in Issy-l’Evêque, a village in the Burgundy countryside close to Vichy but in the occupied zone. The days when she had been close to those writers, when she had been part of a literary circle where she was lionized, seemed part of another era; she was now reduced to selling some jewellery and furs – mostly her mother’s purloined by Irène when her mother fled the capital* – but was unable to publish any of her writings.
Life in the village appeared on the surface to be calmer for Jews, but through friends and family who were still in Paris and because of her own personal situation Némirovsky would have known of the dramatically deteriorating situation for Jews in the capital. Her publishers, Albin Michel, were sending her monthly payments of 4,000 francs but were nervous of publishing her work. Although her name did not appear on the infamous ‘Otto List’ (a list of books banned by the Germans which took its name from Otto Abetz), Robert Esménard told Irène that his firm was no longer able to publish her books and ensure their sale. In the circumstances, Irène saw the payments partly as a gesture of compassion and friendship and partly as an advance against sales of her work which they hoped to make after the war. But when Jewish bank accounts were frozen in 1941, Irène and her husband, Michel Epstein, deeply in debt, were worried about how they would continue to live. At this point Irène ingeniously invited Julie Dumot, her father’s trusted former companion and an Aryan, to live with them. She told her publishers that this same Mlle Dumot was the author of a novel which in fact she herself had written and therefore it was agreed that payments could be made to Mlle Dumot, who subsequently paid Irène. Némirovsky had now lost her own identity as an author and at times despaired of ever again being published; nonetheless she continued to write every day. Julie Dumot was instructed, in the event that she and Michel were arrested, not only to take care of their two small daughters but also, when the money dried up, to sell the fur coats and silverware.
Later in 1941 other propaganda trips to Germany were arranged. One of the most famous, because the participants were photographed as they departed from the Gare de l’Est standing alongside uniformed German officers, comprised eleven artists including André Dérain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Paul Belmondo (father of the actor Jean-Paul). They all argued (after the war) that they had agreed to go in exchange for the release of some prisoners of war. However, there is no evidence that any releases followed. One further trip was made in 1941, this time composed largely of musicians, persuaded to go to Vienna in early December as part of a delegation officially intended to celebrate Mozart Week. But the trip ultimately had little to do with Mozart, as even the fascist writer Lucien Rebatet admitted afterwards.