Research Catalog

Title

The cinema in France : after the New Wave / Jill Forbes.

Author

Forbes, Jill.

Publication

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1993.

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Holdings

Details

Description

xiv, 337 p. : ill.; 22 cm.

Summary

• A generation of film goers was brought up on the nouvelle vague, admiring the works of Godard and Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer and Resnais. These film makers are household names to film lovers, but who are their successors? This major study of the contemporary French cinema demonstrates the richness and variety of French art film. It discusses the works of eleven important film makers, many of whom, like Luc Moullet, Philippe Garrel or Andre Techine, will be virtually unknown to non-French viewers. It also looks at the genres in which French art cinema primarily functions - the thriller, comedy, political and documentary cinema, the history film and women's cinema.
• The study shows how cinema has played a vital role in the social and cultural debates that have taken place in France since 1968: What has become of the working class? What is wrong with the family? How are women oppressed? What is meant by popular culture? Can the mass media be trusted? Is American cultural domination inevitable? The question of representation is of vital concern in our image-dominated societies. This book demonstrates that French film makers have made a tremendous contribution to changing our ways of seeing and our perception of reality, and that their work is central to maintaining an independent audio-visual culture in Europe.

Subject

• Geschichte 1950-1990
• Motion pictures > France > History
• New wave films > France > History and criticism

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Filmography: p. 286-327.
• Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The French film industry since the war : a very brief history -- Political and documentary cinema. The events of May 1968 ; The control of the media : the right to be heard ; How to make political films : "filming different things of filming differently" ; Political films in practice : coup pour coup and tout va bien ; The new documentary ; Nothing but the image ; Documentary and truth -- Hollywood-France : America as influence and intertext. America in French films of the 1950s and 1960s ; The fetishist polar ; The political thriller ; The postmodern thriller ; The meaning of the French thriller -- Women film makers in France. Cinema and the women's movement ; Women's voices ; The power to communicate : the right to speak ; Two examples of women's cinema : Varda and Duras -- Truffaut and Godard in the 1970s. Truffaut : the film maker as producer ; Godard : television and sexal politics -- The heritage of the nouvelle vague. Philippe Garrel ; Jean Eustache ; The film maker as ethnographer ; Explorations of class, sexuality and gender ; Narrative strategies -- In search of the popular cinema : Bertrand Tavernier and the return to the "tradition de qualité". A new traditionalist ; The historian of French society ; Rediscovering America ; Tavernier as a radical film maker -- In search of the popular cinema : new French comedy. Bertrand Blier ; The new humor : from café-théâtre to cinema ; On the road ; The crisis of masculinity ; Luc Moullet -- The family in question. Jacques Doillon ; From utopia to neo-naturalism ; Behind closed doors ; The geometry of desire ; The aesthetics of austerity ; Maurice Pialat ; The Pialat aesthetic ; Sex and family life ; Family life and the class structure -- The new history film. René Allio ; The people's war ; The discourse of history ; Back to Marseilles ; Recovering the 'popular memory' ; André Techiné ; The petty bourgeois consciousness ; The exploration of spectacle.

ISBN

• 0253323673 (cloth)
• 0253323681 (paper)

LCCN

^^^93001368^

OCLC

187466978

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library