Paris in the Cinema

Alastair Phillips is Associate Professor (Reader) in Film Studies at the University of Warwick. His books on French cinema include City of Darkness, City of Light: Émigré Filmmakers in Paris 1929-1939 (2004), Rififi (2009), Journeys of Desire, European Actors in Hollywood (co-edited with Ginette Vincendeau, 2006) and A Companion to Jean Renoir (co-edited with Ginette Vincendeau, 2013). He is an editor of Screen and currently working on a book about the films of Jacques Becker. Ginette Vincendeau is Professor in Film Studies at King’s College London and a regular contributor to Sight and Sound. She has published widely on French cinema and was made Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for services to French Culture. Among her books are Stars and Stardom in French Cinema (2000), Jean-Pierre Melville, An American in Paris (2003), La Haine (2005) and Brigitte Bardot (2013). She co-edited Journeys of Desire: European Actors in Hollywood (2006) and A Companion to Jean Renoir (2013) with Alastair Phillips and The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks (2009) with Peter Graham. Her current research is on the filmmaker Claude Autant-Lara.

Contributors ... include rich and valuable reflections on a range of issues, such as Parisian amateur film-making, Charles Dickens’ debt to Paris and contemporary cinema’s representation of les banlieues. In addition to the remarkable essays, this book includes Isabelle Vanderschelden’s brilliant interview with Jean-Pierre Jeunet (director of Amélie, 2001).

• Acknowledgements.- Beyond the flâneur: an introduction; Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau.- PART 1: LOCATIONS.- The Eiffel Tower: a Parisian film star; Nicoleta Bazgan.- Working-class Paris and post-war noir: Les Portes de la nuit; Thomas Pillard.- The caves of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1950s French cinema; Sébastien Layerle.- Le Signe du lion: Paris in the summer of 1959; Michel Marie.- Truffaut’s apartments; Hilary Radner and Alistair Fox.- The New Wave hotel; Roland-François Lack.- The vanishing of Les Halles; Catherine E. Clark.- The Parisian banlieue on screen: so close, yet so far; Ginette Vincendeau.- PART 2: CHARACTERS.- Maigret from across the Channel; Charlotte Brunsdon.- Parisian cinephiles and the Mac-Mahon; Leila Wimmer.- Beyond the flâneuse: the uniqueness of Cléo de 5 à 7; Jennifer Wallace.- Amateur filmmakers’ Paris: home movies at the Forum des images; Roger Odin.- The concierge in contemporary French Cinema; Raphaëlle Moine.- Parisian lovers in the contemporary romcom; Mary Harrod.- The enduring glamour of the Parisienne; Stephen Gundle.- PART 3: HISTORY.- Charles Dickens’s Two Cities; Colin Jones.- From Meryon to Ulmer’s Bluebeard: a Baudelairian iconography; Jean-Loup Bourget.- Site of infamy: the Vel’ d’Hiv in French cinema; Sandy Flitterman-Lewis.- ‘Unremarkable Paris’: Jacques Becker’s Urban Everyday; Alastair Phillips.- Television and the renewal of Paris, from official discourse to social criticism; Hélène Jannière.- Parisian building sites (1945-1975): from modernity to abstraction; Marie Gaimard and Marguerite Vappereau.- The mirror of a city: the ‘Parisian Collection’ of the Forum des images; Jean-Yves de Lépinay.- INTERVIEW.- Filming Paris: an interview with Jean-Pierre Jeunet.- Contributors.- Select bibliography.