 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).The outbreak of war in 1939 did not immediately interrupt L'Herbier's film-making, and in the spring of 1940 he was at the Scalera studios in Rome shooting a long-cherished project, "La Comédie du bonheur", but the imminent entry of Italy into the war alongside Germany forced him to return to France before the film was fully completed (though it was subsequently released).After the German occupation of France in 1940, L'Herbier worked with other filmmakers to salvage the French film industry and to protect the jobs of its technicians.