Unraveling French Cinema provides a much needed introduction
to the complexities of French film for students, cineastes, and the
movie-loving public.
* Looks at the differences between French and American national
cinema
* Explores how French directors shape their films around two
potentially divergent goals: the narration of a story and an
elaboration of some theory about film itself.
* Demystifies the "difficulty" of French cinema, allowing the
American movie-goer to enjoy films that are too often perplexing at
a first viewing.
* Offers extended analyses of classic, New Wave, and contemporary
French films--including L'Atalante, Adele H.,
The Rules of the Game, and Cache.
Autorentext
T. Jefferson Kline is a Professor of French at Boston University where he served as Chair of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures (1979-88) and more recently received a Metcalf Award for excellence in teaching. His publications include Bertolucci's Dream Loom, I film di Bertolucci, Intertextuality in New Wave French Cinema and various edited works and essays on literature.
Klappentext
Unraveling French Cinema provides a much-needed introduction to the complexities of French film for students, cineastes, and the movie-loving public. Kline analyzes seven cinematic arenas, each chosen to present the reader with an experience of reading a film for plot and a particular definition of what it means to make a film. Each chapter crafts a particular theory of film as dream, hypnosis, mapping, poetry, seduction, mourning, and even terrorism that is central to the French cinematic tradition.
Choosing films that are well known and DVD-accessible, the volume lists series of films that can be profitably viewed through the lens of each chapter. Kline situates François Truffaut's well-known The Story of Adele H. as a pivotal film throughout the book, and threads it through each chapter, with a view to building on readers' acquisition of critical thinking and viewing skills. Unraveling French Cinema is a must-have guide whether you're watching Louis Malle and Lumière classics or Cocteau and Haneke's Caché.
Zusammenfassung
Unraveling French Cinema provides a much needed introduction to the complexities of French film for students, cineastes, and the movie-loving public.
- Looks at the differences between French and American national cinema
- Explores how French directors shape their films around two potentially divergent goals: the narration of a story and an elaboration of some theory about film itself.
- Demystifies the "difficulty" of French cinema, allowing the American movie-goer to enjoy films that are too often perplexing at a first viewing.
- Offers extended analyses of classic, New Wave, and contemporary French filmsincluding L'Atalante, Adele H., The Rules of the Game, and Cache.
Inhalt
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1
1 Cinema and/as Poetry: L'Atalante's Apples as Poems 13
2 Cinema and the Real: Renoir's Rules 35
3 Cinema and/as Crime: Breaking the Law in The Children of Paradise, Pickpocket, and Breathless 54
4 Cinema and/as Mapping: Reorienting Ourselves Through Film 83
5 Cinema and/as Dream: Truffaut's Royal Road to Adele H. 109
6 Cinema and/as Hypnosis: Jacquot's Seventh Heaven 132
7 Cinema and/as Mourning: Anne Fontaine's How I Killed My Father 148
8 Cinema and/as Terror: Michael Haneke's Caché 165
9 Beautiful Fragments: Discontinuity and the French Cinema 179
Notes 193
References 212
Index 219