Following WW2, the film’s writer, Jean-Marie Rivière, was imprisoned. Its producer, Robert Muzard, and director, Paul Riche (the pseudonym of Jean Mamy), were executed (+1949) for their part in the production of this film.
“Occult Forces” was the last film Riche directed before his unjust execution.
Tagline: Les mystères de la francomaçonnerie pour le premier fois dévoilés à l’écran. (The mysteries of Freemasonry revealed for the first time on screen). Plot: The film recounts the life of a young député who joins the Freemasons in order to relaunch his career. He thus learns of how the Freemasons are conspiring with the Jews and the Anglo-american nations to encourage France into a war against Germany.
The film was commissioned in 1942 by the Propaganda Abteilung, a delegation of Nazi Germany’s propaganda ministry within occupied France by the ex-Mason Mamy. It virulently denounces Freemasonry, parliamentarianism and Jews as part of Vichy’s drive against them and seeks to prove a Jewish-Masonic plot. On France’s “liberation” its writer Jean Marquès-Rivière, its producer Robert Muzard and its direction Jean Mamy were purged for collaboration with the enemy. On 25 November 1945, Muzard was condemned to 3 years in prison and Marquès-Rivière was condemned in his absence (he had gone into self-imposed exile) to death and degradation. Mamy had also been a journalist on L’Appel under Pierre Constantini (leader of the Ligue française d’épuration, d’entraide sociale et de collaboration européenne) and on the collaborationist journal Au pilori, and was thus condemned to death and executed at the fortress of Montrouge on 29 March 1949.
