'Le Film français' (1945–1958): rôles, fonctions et identités d'une revue corporative ed. by Laurent Creton, Kira Kitsopanidou, Thomas Pillard (review)

Historically, one or perhaps two French cinema journals (Les Cahiers du cinéma and Positif) have tended to garner considerable critical attention at the expense of all the rest. As a result, both popular cinematic magazines and the trade press have suffered from a relative neglect. However, both are very worthy objects of attention. The latter, the trade press, or one significant part of it, Le Film français, is the subject of this beautifully illustrated and carefully put together multi-authored book. Somewhere near the core of the book lies the claim that Le Film français is a journal worthy of particular note because it played a tripartite role within French cinema: expressing opinions from a variety of players (the state and its agencies, producers, distributors, commercial and non-commercial exhibitors), it functioned in some ways as an agora, a site where different voices could speak out and work through their differences; at the same time, it played the role of a quasi-official mouthpiece for industry bodies and for the Centre national de la cinématographie, the state's cinematic agency; finally, it was the main location for the publication of industry data and, as such, an essential resource for all interested parties. This tripartite function means, as different chapters of the book convincingly show, that Le Film français provides a particularly privileged vantage point from which to observe the industry as it negotiated the immediate post-war period, fought its corner at the time of the famous Blum–Byrnes Agreement, and sought to promote French cinema as a quality product on the international stage. All the chapters are well researched, informative, and able to identify the different interests and at times the politics at stake in relation to particular issues in such a way as to remind us that, far from being a coherent or monolithic body, French cinema was a multiply divided one. Two particularly interesting chapters are provided by Laurent Creton and Kira Kitsopanidou, on the one hand, and Ginette Vincendeau on the other. Creton and Kitsopanidou analyse the growing arsenal of statistics and tables offered by the journal and the increasingly sophisticated visuals used to make them 'speak'. The figures cemented the journal's authority as the 'Bible' of the industry and were, of course, put to work by the industry itself as box-office success became a key way to convince exhibitors to buy into a film or a technology. Focusing on the journal's treatment of Brigitte Bardot, Vincendeau shows that Le Film français only rather belatedly paid attention to the star's stunning rise to fame. Bardot becomes a major object of its attention as she begins to work with more celebrated directors and is seen to have great selling power in foreign markets, particularly the United States. This distinctly non-sensationalist, industrially driven take on the star reminds us that French cinema can look very different from different vantage points. The film-industrial viewpoint is a particularly neglected one, whose importance this very nicely focused book seeks to reassert.