Valuable Reference Work

Dayna Oscherwitz and Maryellen Higgins’ Historical Dictionary of French Cinema, part of Scarecrow Press’ Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts series, is a valuable reference work if only for being one of a kind in English. However, that value is fully earned given the thoroughness with which it succeeds in its project.

The dictionary begins with a lengthy chronology, covering almost every year of film history, followed by an introduction that consists of a brief narrative of the French cinema. In combination, they provide a helpful initiation into the material covered by the dictionary, giving students a basic map to situate the entries. The introduction also outlines many of the tensions and themes that have stimulated French film history; for example, the continual exploration of “the boundaries between documentary and fiction” which Oscherwitz and Higgins see emerging during the first decade of French film history with the Lumières (2). Following the chronology and introduction is the dictionary proper. Its entries fall into a number of categories: personnel and performers, individual films, movements and genres, important theoretical and critical ideas promulgated in France, production companies and firms, and institutions and organizations significant to French film culture.

The concentration is on the entries covering personnel and performers; these offer basic biographical information, a survey of the individual’s career including significant films and awards, and an indication of importance to French film history. The longest entries are reserved for major directors, appropriate for a dictionary covering the film culture that produced the concept of the auteur. Some of the most extensive entries are reserved for, understandably enough, Abel Gance, Jean-Luc Godard, Georges Méliès, Robert Bresson, and Jean Renoir, but there are also lengthy entries on lesser known (but still deserving) filmmakers such as Julien Duvivier, Jacques Feyder, Marcel L’Herbier, and Jean Rouch. The entries on individual films offer brief plot descriptions and an overview of the importance to French cinema.

Similarly, entries on other subjects detail the significance of the object in question, noting how it has interacted with and influenced other aspects of French film culture and thus situating it within the wider narrative and body of French film history. The dictionary’s stress on this historical positioning is further enabled by the way the entries cross-reference each other through bold-faced type, giving the dictionary the feel of an analog version of hypertext and emphasizing that individual aspects of film history can never be understood in a vacuum.

The dictionary concludes with a well-researched bibliography of works in both English and French, divided by the scope and concentration; this reviewer could find no major work of French film history or criticism missing from the list. In their preface, the authors state their hope that the work “appeals to a diverse audience, from well in formed academics looking for a concise reference, to students of the cinema seeking to broaden their knowledge, to the individual who is passionate about the cinema, but still has a good deal to learn” (xi). In this I would say they have succeeded, as the Historical Dictionary to French Cinema is accessible enough for novices in French cinema and thorough enough that even well read scholars will find new and interesting avenues for exploration within its pages.

Particularly worthy of praise is its extensive cross-referencing, made possible by the authors’ diligence, which allows one to get lost within its pages seeking out connections between entries. The authors have ultimately succeeded in the project of writing a historical dictionary: providing a reference that embodies the connections, influences, and interactions of history as well as enabling the reader ready access to and an understanding of that complex network.