The Shifting Identities of French Popular Cinema

Modern & Contemporary France, 2020

Wallflower Press eBooks, 2001

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2015

Hugo Frey opens his book Nationalism and the cinema in France by positioning it as complementary to the rise of scholarship on the transnational dimensions of cinema. Although he sees transnational and national cinema as two sides of the same coin that are often interwoven, Frey concentrates on the latter, thereby focusing on France in the period 1945-1995. The aim of the book is twofold. On the one hand, Frey aims to discern the ‘political myths’ (p. 10, in keeping with Christopher Flood’s Political myth: a theoretical introduction, 1996) or ideological values of the narratives that films can incorporate, thereby looking in particular for ‘nationalistic subtexts’ (p. 4) in French films. At the methodological level, this implies a textual film analysis that is focused primarily on film narratives. On the other hand, Frey puts forward the concept of the ‘film event’ (p. 11, in keeping with Marco Ferro’s Cinéma et histoire, 1993) or the societal interactions that films can evoke. In this respect, he aims to examine how the reception of specific films is ‘coloured by nationalist discourses’ (p. 4). Methodologically, this implies a historical reception analysis of the public discourse surrounding the selected films. The in-depth analysis of an impressive number of both mainstream and specialist press writings is, without doubt, one of the main achievements of this book. Frey is at his best when describing and analyzing the public discourse surrounding the films (e.g. Claude Lelouch’s Un homme et une femme (1966), Andrzej Wajda’s Danton (1983) and many others), thereby providing interesting insights into the societal meaning of the films and the place of cinema in French public debates. According to the title and the two main goals of the book, one would expect a thorough discussion of the debates around the highly contested concepts of nation, nationalism, nation-building and national identity. Nevertheless, the book only briefly describes ‘the national idea’ as ‘a modern construct’ and France as an ‘imagined community’ (in keeping with Benedict Anderson’s well-known phrase) to which cinema can contribute (p. 7). Frey further adheres to Michel Winock’s distinction between a Republican imaginary of France as ‘socially inclusive and founded on the notion that citizenship is about a loyalty to the constitution’ and an organic or counter-revolutionary imaginary of France, which is based on ‘a perceived set of cultural values (…) and ethnic and cultural traditions and practice’ (p. 8). This short theoretical positioning leaves many conceptual questions unanswered; these include the basic use of the term ‘nationalism’ and its relation to the term ‘nation’, which is mostly used in the sense of a ‘country’. Also, the book is not embedded in the academic debate on the relationship between nationalism and cinema, and although Frey mentions authors like Jean-Michel Frodon, Ginette Vincendeau and Susan Hayward, who have elaborated on issues concerning the national question and cinema in France, minimal attention is given to discussions with these authors. Notwithstanding this lack of interaction with the existing academic debates, as well as some typographical inaccuracies (e.g. ‘Ernst Gellner’ (p. 7), ‘the Lumières brothers from Lyons’ (p. 24)), Nationalism and the cinema in France offers an original and meticulously researched historical investigation of a highly interesting selection of French cinema culture. The originality of the book is, for example, clearly exemplified by the first chapter, which gives a fresh reading of François Truffaut’s La nuit Américaine (1973); Agnès Varda’s one hundred years of cinema commemoration film Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma (1995) and other films about films (including critical and even sarcastic works by Jean-Luc Godard and Bertrand Blier), which have, for the most part, been previously interpreted in cinephilic terms rather than as celebrations of the greatness of France as the home of cinema. One of the merits of this book is indeed the revelation of how subtle and very often unnoticed forms of nation-building can be present in a modern society, which Frey rightly links to Michael Billig’s concept of ‘banal nationalism’. Chapter two, which addresses how a selection of French films has mediated national history (particularly wartime resistance), and chapter three, on the nationalist subtexts of (mainly the reception of) Claude Lelouch’s Un homme et une femme (1966) and other melodramas from the 1960s and 1970s, complete the first part of the book, which offers an analysis of how cinema has contributed, often in subtle and sophisticated ways, to discourses of French grandeur, pride and glory. The second part of the book consists of four chapters that focus on more negatively defined and often much more explicit and essentialist nationalistic discourses concentrating on the role of non-French ‘others’ (what Frey refers to as ‘hard nationalism’). Frey begins with an examination of the anti-Americanism that runs through the French protests against economic and trade agreements that are seen to threaten French cinema culture, whereby he notices that such anti-Americanism is much less (explicitly) present in individual films. The following chapter scrutinizes how certain types of films (particularly action films) ‘perpetuated patriotic and defensive colonialist myths and stereotypes’ (p. 129), after which he focuses on the public controversy in France around films referring to the Algerian War of Independence (particularly Gillo Pontecorvo’s La bataille d'Alger (1966)). Next, Frey discusses anti-Semitic elements in French films and cinema culture, with special attention to the short period in 1989 when director Claude Autant-Lara was elected as a member of the European Parliament for the far-right Front National and caused controversy with his anti-Semitic statements. The final chapter of the book examines the extreme-right sympathies of Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot and Gérard Blain and the reactionary protests against Martin Scorcese’s The last temptation of Christ (1988). By focusing upon the extreme-right in these last two chapters, Frey offers an original and most timely analysis of the Front National’s relationship with cinema. As in the previous chapters, this analysis insightfully illustrates the pivotal role that films can play in society.

Literature Aesthetics, 2011

Ulrich Beck defines cosmopolitanization as internal globalization, globalization from within national societies 1 , a process that comes from the growth of transnational social spaces, social fields and networks. Living in a transnational world, individuals, according to Victor Roudometof, can assume an open, encompassing attitude or a closed, defensive posture 2 , they can adopt a cosmopolitan perspective or take a protective, local stance which can be very influential in many social and cultural areas. Cosmopolitans and locals occupy the opposite ends of a continuum consisting of various forms of attachment to and support of a locality, a state, a local culture, and they diverge with respect to the degree of economic, cultural and institutional protectionism they espouse. However, Roudometof insists on the necessity to regard these two alternatives not as discontinuous variables but rather as forming a single continuum. In addition, it is possible for an individual or an organization to combine both global and local forms of actions, which is what Roudometof calls "Glocalized cosmopolitanism". This article will examine how the French film industry with its state-based support system has evolved throughout its history to combine global and local initiatives in order to develop and foster diversity in cinema inside and outside France. In France, the birthplace of cinema, cinema enjoys a special status: it is considered not only an art form and an industry but it is also thought to be a cultural force in the world. "Cinema matters more to the French than it does in most European countries". 3 It has been suggested that cinema and nationalism are associated, that it is no coincidence that cinema was

Literature & Aesthetics, 2010

It has been suggested that cinema and nationalism are linked historically, as cinema was born at the end of the nineteenth century, the age of nationalism. The film scholar Susan Hayward has argued that cinema reflects the texture of society on a national level and is "the mobiliser of the nation's myths and the myths of a nation." 1 But cinema has also always been seen as a transnational medium, and according to Will Higbee "The French pioneers and entrepreneurs of early cinema were quick to grasp the potential of moving images to cross national and cultural boundaries, establishing a dominant hold over international distribution and production networks by the early 1900s." 2 However, discourses on French cinema traditionally focus less on its transnational context than on notions of cultural specificities, cultural authenticity and indigenous production. As a result, French cinema is often considered to be the embodiment of national cinema. However, the aim of this paper is to show that the history of the French film industry with its government subsidies, national institutions and its 'auteur' films has paradoxically fostered transnationalism and transculturalism. According to Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, The transnational can be understood as the global forces that link people or institutions across nations. Key to transnationalism is the recognition of the decline of national sovereignty as a regulatory force in global coexistence. The impossibility of assigning a fixed national identity to much cinema reflects the dissolution of any stable connection between a film's place of production and/or setting and the nationality of its makers and performers.

in A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema, Alistair Fox, Michel Marie, Raphaëlle Moine, Hilary Radner (dir.), Wiley Blackwell, pp. 314-332., 2015

The heritage genre enables major French stars, because of its associations with spectacle and identity, to confront a context that is extremely competitive and destabilizing, owing to the domination of American blockbusters, the conversion of theaters to digital, and the bad health of the French economy. Often bringing prestige, performance, international visibility, together in a single role both critical and commercial success together in a single role, stars who achieve renown in heritage fictions are better able than any others to exercise a certain form of resistance: to the contemporary crisis, to the chasm between auteur cinema and commercial cinema, to the disappearance of the classical star-system, and to the supremacy of Hollywood. This chapter shows how and why, and within what limits, this nostalgic return to the past allows major stars to resolve the contradiction inherent in French cinema, both within France, and in the eyes of the rest of the world.

SubStance, 2014

Contemporary French Civilization, 2018

The French Review, 2025

This dissertation develops a comprehensive study of the influence exerted by Hollywood “genre” cinema, in particular the B-series film noir, on the French New Wave. Initially, I ask if this relationship is not the principle identifying criterion of New Wave cinema. It is, after all, a matter of record that Hollywood’s cheaply-made B-movies were championed by the critics of Cahiers du cinéma as permitting authorial self-expression and as encouraging cinematic innovation and evolution. Genre cinema subsequently remained a preoccupation for the New Wave auteurs, who made no fewer than fifty gangster and crime films between 1958 and 1965, including many of the New Wave’s most iconic films. I therefore embark on a comparative study that considers in great detail the New Wave’s reprisal and adaptation of the film noir format, with my analyses focused not only on character and plot conventions, but also on the tropes, aesthetics and filmmaking production techniques common to both cinemas. I show how the two cinemas cross-pollinate, especially given that the French polar itself exerted influence on Hollywood film noir and that French critics were among the first to identify the new tendency towards making film noir in postwar Hollywood. I also draw a number of important conclusions. Primarily, I show that while the New Wave borrows extensively from Hollywood aesthetics, its manipulation and subversion of American film noir conventions are also at the very heart of the politique des auteurs. This politique is characterized by a profound dissatisfaction with their era, the Americanization of French society, France’s involvement in Algeria, and a reticence about the impending sexual liberation movement. I contextualize my project within the current debate in film and French studies regarding the legacy of the New Wave, particularly in light of a tendency to cast doubt on the movement’s involvement with “the political,” as well as to dispute the New Wave’s status as a defining moment in French cinema.