Studies in French Cinema

Will Higbee is a senior lecturer in film studies and co-director of the Centre for Research in Film Studies at University of Exeter. He is the author of Matthieu Kassovitz.Sarah Leahy is a senior lecturer in French and film at Newcastle University. She is the author of Casque d'or.Will Higbee and Sarah Leahy are associate editors of Studies in French Cinema.

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.

• Introduction – W. Higbee and S. Leahy PART I Chapter1: 'Pierrot le fou' and post-New Wave French cinema – Jill Forbes Chapter 2: National Cinemas and the Body Politic – Susan Hayward Chapter 3: Unfamiliar Places: 'heterospection' and recent French films on children – Phil Powrie Chapter 4: The circular ruins? Frontiers, exile and the nation in Renoir’s 'Le Crime de Monsieur Lange' – Keith Reader Chapter 5: Beurz N the Hood: The articulation of Beur and French identities in 'Le Thé au harem d'Archimède' and 'Hexagone' – Carrie Tarr Chapter 6: Community, Nostalgia and the Spectacle of Masculinity – Ginette Vincendeau PART II Chapter 7: Asserting text, context and intertext: Jill Forbes and French Film Studies – Julia Dobson Chapter 8: Jill Forbes: The continued conversation – Sue Harris Chapter 9: Political Threads and Material Memory: Mayo’s Wardrobe for 'Casque d’or' (1952) – Jennie Cousins Chapter 10: ‘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 Chapter 11: Phil Powrie: French film studies as a heterotopic field – Ann Davies Chapter 12: Men in Unfamiliar Places: A response to Phil Powrie – Alison Smith Chapter 13: To elicit and elude: The film writing of Keith Reader – Douglas Morrey Chapter 14: Sexuality (and Resnais): A response to Keith Reader – Emma Wilson Chapter 15: Of spaces and difference in 'La Graine et le mulet' (Kechiche, 2007): A dialogue with Carrie Tarr – Will Higbee Chapter 16: Cinema, the second sex and studies of French women’s films in the 2000s – Kate Ince Chapter 17: The bafflement of Gabin and Raimu and the breathlessness of Belmondo: a dialogue with the work of Ginette Vincendeau – Martin O'Shaughnessy Chapter 18: Placing French Film History – Alastair Phillips PART III Chapter 19: To the distant observer – Jill Forbes Chapter 20: Censoring French ‘Cinéma de qualité’ — 'Bel-Ami' (Louis Daquin, 1954) – Susan Hayward Chapter 21: Raymond Bernard's 'Les Misérables' (1934) – Keith Reader Chapter 22: Jewish-Arab Relations in French and Maghrebi Cinema(s) – Carrie Tarr Chapter 23: The Frenchness of French Cinema: The language of national identity, from the regional to the trans-national – Ginette Vincendeau Chapter 24: Four decades of teaching and research in French cinema – Phil Powrie