Studies in French Cinema looks at the development of French screen studies in the United Kingdom over the past twenty years and the ways in which innovative scholarship in the UK has helped shape the field in English and French speaking universities. This seminal text is also a tribute to six key figures within the field who have been leaders in research and teaching of French cinema: Jill Forbes, Susan Hayward, Phil Powrie, Keith Reader, Carrie Tarr, and Ginette Vincendeau.
Coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the celebrated Intellect journal of the same title and covering a wide range of key films —contemporary and historical, popular and auteur—the volume provides an invaluable overview of the state of French cinema and French film studies at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Download the review from Contemporary French Civilization here.
Chapter titles
Introduction
W. Higbee and S. Leahy
PART I
'Pierrot le fou' and post-New Wave French cinema
Jill Forbes
National Cinemas and the Body Politic
Susan Hayward
Unfamiliar Places: 'heterospection' and recent French films on children
Phil Powrie
The circular ruins? Frontiers, exile and the nation in Renoir’s 'Le Crime de Monsieur Lange'
Keith Reader
Beurz N the Hood: The articulation of Beur and French identities in 'Le Thé au harem d'Archimède' and 'Hexagone'
Carrie Tarr
Community, Nostalgia and the Spectacle of Masculinity
Ginette Vincendeau
PART II
Asserting text, context and intertext: Jill Forbes and French Film Studies
Julia Dobson
Jill Forbes: The continued conversation
Sue Harris
Political Threads and Material Memory: Mayo’s Wardrobe for 'Casque d’or' (1952)
Jennie Cousins
‘Une vraie famille Benetton’: Maternal metaphors of nation in 'Il y a longtemps que je t’aime' (Claudel, 2008) - a response to Susan Hayward
Sarah Leahy
Phil Powrie: French film studies as a heterotopic field
Ann Davies
Men in Unfamiliar Places: A response to Phil Powrie.
Alison Smith
To elicit and elude: The film writing of Keith Reader
Douglas Morrey
Sexuality (and Resnais): A response to Keith Reader
Emma Wilson
Of spaces and difference in 'La Graine et le mulet' (Kechiche, 2007): A dialogue with Carrie Tarr
Will Higbee
Cinema, the second sex and studies of French women’s films in the 2000s
Kate Ince
The bafflement of Gabin and Raimu and the breathlessness of Belmondo: a dialogue with the work of Ginette Vincendeau
Martin O'Shaughnessy
Placing French Film History
Alastair Phillips
PART III
To the distant observer
Jill Forbes
Censoring French ‘Cinéma de qualité’ — 'Bel-Ami' (Louis Daquin, 1954)
Susan Hayward
Raymond Bernard's 'Les Misérables' (1934)
Keith Reader
Jewish-Arab Relations in French and Maghrebi Cinema(s)
Carrie Tarr
The Frenchness of French Cinema: The language of national identity, from the regional to the trans-national
Ginette Vincendeau
Four decades of teaching and research in French cinema
Phil Powrie
Reviews
'We find, here, an overview of French cinema from the 1930s to the early twenty-first century that offers a complex and multilayered vision of its field of study, which draws on questions of gender, nation, sexuality, community, and identity. Inevitably, while
each of these articles raises fundamental questions that remain relevant to those researching and teaching French Film studies, the dialogue that emerges through the inclusion of the six pieces together is particularly thought provoking.' – Cristina Johnston, Contemporary French Civilization
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