Entente cordiale
After trying to revive his own production company, this time under the name Cinéphonic, to produce some short documentaries, l'Herbier tried to develop more satisfactory material for himself in a series of dramatised histories which he called "chroniques filmées". The three which he completed before the outbreak of World War II were "La Tragédie impériale" (1938), about Tsar Nicholas II and Rasputin, "Adrienne Lecouvreur" (1938), filmed at the UFA studios in Berlin, and "Entente cordiale" (1939), which used the life of Edward VII to demonstrate the affinities between France and Britain; (its première in April 1939 took place in the wake of the German invasion of Czechoslovakia).