Jill Forbes – författare

This major study of the contemporary French cinema includes a survey of the French film industry, chapters on major genres such as political and documentary cinema, women's cinema, comedy, the thriller and the history film, studies of eleven of the most significant post-1968 film-makers, together with extensive filmographies and a bibliography. Throughout the volume, discussion is related to the broader context of French culture and society with particular emphasis on the politics of representation, the interpretation of history, the nature of the popular issues of class and gender and the legacy of May 1968.

The survival of cinema in Europe and the analysis of its heritage are key issues for the new century. This book asks how we can define European cinema and how it should be studied. It provides an overview of the problems, traditions and key questions that have informed the study of European cinema, investigating the links and tensions between Europe and Hollywood and exploring the different experiences of national identities within a common European framework.Twelve case studies of individual European films ranging from The Battleship Potemkin and The Lodger, to La Haine and Trainspotting, illustrate the distinctiveness and variety of cinema in Europe as well as the various critical methods by which it can be studied.With its detailed analysis of films from several European countries including Britain and Russia, the book encourages a comparative approach and raises urgent questions about the future of European cinema in the context of globalization. It will be of interest to students in Film Studies, European Studies and Modern European Languages and Cultures.

In one stimulating source this successful text provides a rigorous analysis of the political, economic and social developments in post-war France. The analysis is supported by specially selected French language texts and exercises. This text is suitable for undergraduate students of French (especially within a languages, social science, or business course) and for courses in French Studies and European Studies.

Les Enfants du paradis, a magnificent picaresque saga of Parisian street life and popular culture, has been called the greatest film ever made. Completed during the Occupation, it nevertheless boasted the largest set ever to have been built in a French studio, a crowd of extras and, under the direction of Marcel Carné, some of the most accomplished technicians and actors available (including Arletty and Jean-Louis Barrault as the central couple doomed to remain apart).Jill Forbes examines how, at a time of crisis, the film reimagined the history of France. Although Les Enfants du paradis is escapist, even fantastic, Forbes finds in it a radical, counter-cultural sensibility concerned with destabilising social hierarchies and prescribed sexual roles and questioning the opposition between life and art. Vibrant, joyous but also touched by melancholy, the film combines the traditions of high culture and popular theatre to remarkable effect.