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Reviewed by:
  • The French Cinema Book
  • Douglas Morrey
The French Cinema Book. Edited by Michael Temple and Michael Witt. London: BFI Publishing, 2004. x + 294 pp. Pb £18.99.

Colleagues working on French film will already be familiar with The French Cinema Book. First published in 2004 and reprinted in 2007, this invaluable resource has become one of the foremost reference works in the field, useful for both teaching and research. The editors have brought the full range of approaches in film studies to bear on the subject, providing a cultural, institutional, and technical overview that gives relatively little space to this field's rather tired insistence on auteur studies, high theory, and representational issues in individual films. Three strategic decisions guided the volume's organization: a commitment to balanced coverage of all eras of French cinema (one third of the book is devoted to silent film), an inclusive definition of what 'cinema' means (discussion takes in animation, documentary, experimental cinema, shorts, etc.), and a determination not to restrict reference to the small corpus of films available on subtitled DVD. The book is divided into three historical sections, with one chapter in each on people, business, technology, forms, representations, spectators, and debates. The four-decade periods mean that most contributors are confined to broad-brush historical accounts, and some chapters restate arguments that will be familiar from individual authors' book-length works (Abel, Creton, Crisp, Phillips). Still, as an introductory work, the book is peerless, with admirable exposition throughout and a merciful absence of theoretical jargon. Part 1 (1890-1930) dispels various myths surrounding early French cinema, demonstrating that Pathé and Gaumont were a far more influential pair on this early history than Lumière and Méliès, and, furthermore, that the opposition between the latter pair has been overstated. We also learn that many techniques associated with later cinema (sound, colour, animation methods) were present at a much earlier stage, but that forms were standardized around dominant commercial trends, just as the behaviour of spectators, once unruly and unpredictable, gradually became homogenized through the gentrification of the audience. There is also a recognition that surrealism 'has had a pervasive influence out of all proportion to the film work of actual surrealists' (p. 51). Part 2 (1930-60, the 'Golden Age') suggests that auteurism is less useful as an approach than a focus on genres, production design, industry-wide formal trends, and stars. The proximity of classical French cinema to theatre is shown to have had consequences for technology (the preference for multi-camera shooting), business (the chaotic, artisanal structure of the industry), and form (the inclusion of musical numbers). The final section (1960-2004) implies that the decisive break that came with the New Wave, and the movement's continuing influence, may well be overstated, although the recurring figure of Jean-Luc Godard, the only director of the modern era to have acquired 'truly iconic status' (p. 191), testifies to its importance. Many reasons for optimism about the future of French cinema are cited: the existence of a vertically integrated, independent distribution network (MK2); a production strategy in which profitability takes second place to diversity; an industry in which traditional mimetic forms rub shoulders with CGI productions able to compete with Hollywood; and a recovery in audience numbers, after the 1990s slump, with the emergence of a new generation of filmgoers. [End Page 134]

Douglas Morrey
University of Warwick
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