Offering portraits of such key figures as the Lumière brothers, Georges Méliès, Charles Pathé and Léon Gaumont, he looks at the early pioneers who transformed a fairground novelty into a global industry. The crisis caused by the First World War led France to surrender her position as the world's dominant film-making power, but French cinema forged a new role for itself as a beacon of cinematic possibility and achievement. Producing such distinctive film-makers as Jean Renoir, Marcel Pagnol, Sachy Guitry and Julien Duvivier, the French cinema's Golden Age boasted an intelligence, maturity and flair that classical Hollywood could admire but struggle to emulate. Suggesting a Gallic attitude that has always considered the cinema to be as much a cause as a business, Drazin looks at the extraordinary resilience of the French film industry during the Second World War when, in spite of the national catastrophe of defeat and occupation, it was still able to produce such classics as Le Corbeau and Les Enfants du Paradis. Finally, he traces its remarkable post-war regeneration. He looks at the seminal impact of the New Wave of film-makers - typified by Truffaut and Godard - but also at the other waves that have followed since. As he brings the story up-to-date - with Jacques Audaird's award-winning A Prophet - he seeks to capture the essence of the French film tradition and why it continues to matter to anyone who cares about the cinema.

This thoroughly revised and expanded edition of a key textbook offers an innovative and accessible account of the richness and diversity of French film history and culture from the 1890s to the present day. The contributors, who include leading historians and film scholars, provide an indispensable introduction to key topics and debates in French film history. Each chronological section addresses seven key themes – people, business, technology, forms, representations, spectators and debates, providing an essential overview of the cinema industry, the people who worked in it, including technicians and actors as well as directors, and the culture of cinema going in France from the beginnings of cinema to the contemporary period.

French novels, plays, poems and short stories, however temporally or culturally distant from us, continue to be incarnated and reincarnated on cinema screens across the world. From the silent films of Georges Méliès to the Hollywood production of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary directed by Sophie Barthes, The History of French Literature on Film explores the key films, directors, and movements that have shaped the adaptation of works by French authors since the end of the 19th century. Across six chapters, Griffiths and Watts examine the factors that have driven this vibrant adaptive industry, as filmmakers have turned to literature in search of commercial profits, cultural legitimacy, and stories rich in dramatic potential. The volume also explains how the work of theorists from a variety of disciplines (literary theory, translation theory, adaptation theory), can help to deepen both our understanding and our appreciation of literary adaptation as a creative practice. Finally, this volume seeks to make clear that adaptation is never a simple transcription of an earlier literary work. It is always simultaneously an adaptation of the society and era for which it is created. Adaptations of French literature are thus not only valuable artistic artefacts in their own right, so too are they important historical documents which testify to the values and tastes of their own time.

It is often taken for granted that French cinema is intimately connected to the nation’s sense of identity and self-confidence. But what do we really know about that relationship? What are the nuances, insider codes, and hidden history of the alignment between cinema and nationalism? Hugo Frey suggests that the concepts of the ‘political myth’ and ‘the film event’ are the essential theoretical reference points for unlocking film history. Nationalism and the Cinema in France offers new arguments regarding those connections in the French case, examining national elitism, neo-colonialism, and other exclusionary discourses, as well as discussing for the first time the subculture of cinema around the extreme right Front National. Key works from directors such as Michel Audiard, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Marcel Pagnol, Jean Renoir, Jacques Tati, François Truffaut, and others provide a rich body of evidence.

This book explores the creation and destruction of Abel Gance’s most ambitious film project, and seeks to explain why his meteoric career was so nearly extinguished at the end of silent cinema. By 1929, Gance was France’s most famous director. Acclaimed for his technical innovation and visual imagination, he was also admonished for the excessive length and expense of his productions. Gance’s first sound film, La Fin du Monde (1930), was a critical and financial disaster so great that it nearly destroyed his career. But what went wrong? Gance claimed it was commercial sabotage whilst critics blamed the director’s inexperience with new technology. Neither excuse is satisfactory. Based on extensive archival research, this book re-investigates the cultural background and aesthetic consequences of Gance’s transition from silent filmmaking to sound cinema. La Fin du Monde is revealed to be only one element of an extraordinary cultural project to transform cinema into a universal religion and propagate its power through the League of Nations. From unfinished films to unrealized social revolutions, the reader is given a fascinating tour of Gance’s lost cinematic utopia.

Twelve years ago, Amores Perros erupted in the cinemas across the world and announced the arrival of Mexican film-makers. The film-makers profiled in that book have now come of age and have made a decisive impact on the international cinema scene The last few years Mexican film-makers winning the Best Director Oscars 5 times, and Best Picture 4 times: Alfonso Cuaron with Gravity and Roma. Alejandro Inarritu with Birdman and The RevenantGuillermo del Toro with The Shape of WaterThis revised edition of The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema brings this astounding story up to date, as well as profiling the next generation, waiting in the wings.

The Hollywood model of cinema as mass-market spectacle—as entertainment rather than an art—is more dominant than ever, its box-office power amounting to an effective monopoly. France has been one of the most active countries to challenge this hegemony. A key motivation has been its sense of a distinct film tradition that has always provided the most sustained alternative model to Hollywood. The respected film critic Charles Drazin has written what will become the definitive history of French cinema. Drazin examines France’s role as the inventor of cinema and its pivotal influence over the language of cinema across the past century. Along the way, he highlights the influence of Hollywood directors such as Hitchcock, Ford, and Hawks on Truffaut’s generation, as well as the impact of British directors such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh on current filmmakers. French Cinema seeks to capture some essence of French cinema through the key personalities and episodes in its history, but it is also the story of a conflict between two traditions that continues to this day.

Walter Salles's film The Motorcycle Diaries follows the journey made by the young medical student Che Guevara across Argentina, through Chile, to Peru. At the climax, Guevara exhorts his audience to see beyond their borders and embrace a truly continental identity. This vision lives on today, in the work of a new generation of South American filmmakers. Following the buena onda, the 'good wave' that included the Brazilian favela film City of God, the 2000s saw a renaissance in the continent's cinema, with such diverse Argentine movies as Nine Queens and The Holy Girl, and dazzling new work from Uruguay, Chile and Peru. The new directors have won prizes at major film festivals, been nominated for Oscars, and captured the imagination of audiences worldwide. Many tackle the question of identity amid the ever-changing political and social landscapes of their troubled countries, while developing a network of collaboration and inspiration across the continent. This book featured interviews with the most significant voices of this Latin new wave - people who are 'bonded by blood, politics, strife, courage, ingenuity, and a shared desire and splendid resolve to make movies'.

The essays in this volume seek to analyze biographical films as representations of historical individuals and the times in which they lived. To do this, contributors examine the context in which certain biographical films were made, including the state of knowledge about their subjects at that moment, and what these films reveal about the values and purposes of those who created them. This is an original approach to biographical (as opposed to historical) films and one that has so far played little part in the growing literature on historical films. The films discussed here date from the 1920s to the 2010s, and deal with males and females in periods ranging from the Middle Ages to the end of the twentieth century. In the process, the book discusses how biographical films reflect changing attitudes towards issues such as race, gender and sexuality, and examines the influence of these films on popular perceptions of the past. The introduction analyses the nature of biographical films as a genre: it compares and contrasts the nature of biography on film with written biographies, and considers their relationship with the discipline of history. As the first collection of essays on this popular but understudied genre, this book will be of interest to historians as well as those in film and cultural studies.

Unraveling French Cinema provides a much needed introductionto the complexities of French film for students, cineastes, and themovie-loving public. Looks at the differences between French and American nationalcinema Explores how French directors shape their films around twopotentially divergent goals: the narration of a story and anelaboration of some theory about film itself. Demystifies the "difficulty" of French cinema, allowing theAmerican movie-goer to enjoy films that are too often perplexing ata first viewing. Offers extended analyses of classic, New Wave, and contemporaryFrench films—including L'Atalante, Adele H.,The Rules of the Game, and Cache.