Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations by Tami Williams (review)

Germaine Dulac (1882–1942) has long been known as a pioneer of French film who promoted the cinema as a unique form of art and education, particularly in the early decades of the twentieth century. While Dulac has been studied by feminist film scholars such as Sandy Flitterman-Lewis (To Desire Differently (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990)), full recognition of her accomplishments has been hindered by the disappearance or limited availability of most of her films, the lack of relevant archival information, and the bracketing of women’s work by a largely male tradition of film critics and theorists unable or unwilling to imagine that women’s creations could be of any interest. In 1996, Dulac’s personal archive was made available at the Bibliothèque du film in Paris, and Tami Williams has examined in detail Dulac’s letters, project descriptions, and work documents to create a vibrant portrait of Dulac’s life and times. Williams has also tracked down virtually every available film made by Dulac, most of which, unfortunately, are either lost or available only in archives (she provides a detailed filmography). Williams’s inspired analyses of the available films will lead, one hopes, to greater accessibility and distribution. Dulac’s filmmaking reputation has been based largely on two films: La Souriante Madame Beudet (1922) and La Coquille et le clergyman (1927), the former an inventive exploration of a woman’s point of view within traditional bourgeois marriage, and the latter a surrealist journey of desire and flow, best known for the controversy it inspired when Antonin Artaud, author of the screenplay, denounced Dulac’s adaptation. Williams demonstrates that Dulac’s legacy extends far beyond these two films, beyond the 1920s, and beyond the avant-garde. Dulac’s career covered a wide range of historical contexts, from the Belle Époque to the First World War, from the 1920s to the advent of the Second World War. (Before her death, Dulac proposed films on maréchal Pétain, the leader of the collaborationist Vichy government, and Williams is admirably sanguine as she attempts to make sense of this development.) Williams traces Dulac’s contributions to the cinema through her writing, through her activism on behalf of feminism, socialism, and film, and through her passions, including music, dance, social activism, and her relationships with women. Dancer and actor Stacia Napierkowska was one of several women in Dulac’s life who became a lover and also a great artistic influence, and Dulac said of her: ‘It’s alongside this beautiful artist, Napierkowska, and thanks to her, that I learned the secrets of cinegraphic art’ (p. 53; Williams’s translation). Dulac was married to a man, but, as is the case with much of her life, she was not bound by social convention. While her work changed over time (and included newsreels and documentaries), she maintained a consistent preoccupation with what Williams calls ‘stylistic dualism, with its combination of realist representations of social conditions and symbolist representations of psychic life’ (p. 42; original emphasis). Williams’s study is a pleasure to read, a model of feminist film history, and an achievement that suggests many avenues for future research.