French Cinema: A Critical Filmography , i: 1929–1939 ; ii: 1940–1958 . By Colin Crisp
2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 71; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/fs/knw284
ISSN1468-2931
Autores Tópico(s)French Historical and Cultural Studies
ResumoIf anyone is best placed to chart the development of French cinema and elucidate its tropes, characters, and stars, then it is Colin Crisp, author of The Classic French Cinema, 1930–1960 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) and Genre, Myth, and Convention in the French Cinema, 1929–1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) — obligatory primers for undergraduate and scholar alike. Crisp’s latest trip down the highways and byways of French film history is a two-part filmography that charts in meticulous and idiosyncratic detail various films made between 1929 and 1958. These two years are important: while 1929 saw the transition from silent to sound film, 1958 heralded the arrival of de Gaulle, the Fifth Republic, and the beginnings of the French New Wave. What happened in the intervening three decades lies at the heart of these companion pieces. Each volume contains 101 films listed chronologically; each entry contains an overview of the film’s cultural and historical significance and a summary of its plot and narrative structure. Often, particular ideological resonances are brought into sharp focus. So Crisp reads Le Corbeau (dir. by Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1943) as ‘an attack not just on the petty bourgeoisie of [the] town but on humanity as a whole’ (ii, 78), and sees in Jeux interdits (dir. by René Clément, 1952) not just a series of games of death that the child protagonists play, but a version of war itself ‘as the forbidden game that humanity cannot resist playing’ (ii, 232). The eclectic selection policy is to be applauded. There were 1300 films made in France between 1929 and 1939, and volume i contains only a fraction. Yet Crisp toggles between established masterpieces (La Bandera (dir. by Julien Duvivier, 1935), La Grande Illusion (dir. by Jean Renoir, 1937)), and long-forgotten popular works (Monsieur Coccinelle (dir. by Dominique Bernard-Deschamps, 1938), Messieurs les Ronds-de-Cuir (dir. by Yves Mirande, 1937)) to illustrate how critically neglected works by the likes of Mirande offer up incisive, satirical, and deeply ambivalent takes on French society in the late 1930s that are just as scathing as those of Renoir. This democratizing tendency is one of the book’s strongest points: by delving into the mise en scène, editing practices, and ‘theatricality’ of largely unseen works of French 1930s cinema, Crisp reveals the richness of different genres and pushes back against the critically sanctioned masterpieces of, say, Marcel Carné, in favour of inclusivity and diversity.
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