Studying French Cinema by Isabelle Vanderschelden (review)

In ten chapters on ten cinéastes, Studying French Cinema offers “in-context studies … of contemporary French films, all of which inform the history of French cinema and its diversity” (7). Its fifteen films are not necessarily the best known since the 1950s; rather, they show “a facet of French culture, such as education, history, representation of French society in film, representation of stereotypes, national and personal identity and immigration” (20). Vanderschelden’s work differs from other recent texts in the genres and production types she has chosen as well as her combination of French textual analysis and British cultural studies.

From François Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Agnès Varda, and Louis Malle, to Claude Miller, Nicolas Philibert, Francis Weber, Christophe Gans, and Ismaël Ferroukhi, the déroulement is more or less historical, moving from 1959 (Les 400 Coups) to 2004 (Le Grand Voyage). Chapter titles point to the broader contextualizations. For example, the chapter “François Truffaut: An Auteur’s Representation of Childhood” describes his childhood during the wartime Occupation leading to cinema becoming his life (and the title of his 1975 book) and to the subject matter of the films studied here, Les 400 coups and L’Argent de poche. After noting Truffaut’s importance in cinema history, Vanderschelden offers synopses of the films and the contexts of their production. The childhood theme gets thorough analysis, followed by filmic concerns: style, use of space, camerawork, sound and music, narrative and time, and editing. Her conclusion charts Truffaut’s evolution as he moves from his auteurist approach to a more independent and accessible cinema.

Godard’s trajectory after the French New Wave with À Bout de souffle and Pierrot le fou, is shown to challenge “the established post-war cinematic conventions to reinvent the film practices of the 1960s” (47). After offering synopses of the two films Vanderschelden broadens her scope to characters, narrative constructions, editing, language, and recurrent themes in early Godard films. Her conclusion is a Godardesque non-conclusion about his constant, ever-shifting search “to answer the seminal questions of what cinema really is…” (69).

“New Wave Legacy and the French Auteur” looks at Claude Chabrol’s film, Le Boucher. A case study that illustrates his oeuvre, Chabrol’s masterpiece is used here to discuss the cultural context of rural France. Vanderschelden focuses on mise-en-scène and narrative construction. She underscores Chabrol’s use of multiple points of view, edits manipulated to create distance between characters and audience, color motifs, and dramatic effects through contrasts and abrupt changes. Le Boucher stands as a clear example of Chabrol’s authorial signature: “a psychological approach to suspense and a structured, implacable construction” (89). Le Boucher, she concludes, can be studied all by itself as a masterpiece, as part of the Hélène cycle, or as an iconic example of what auteur cinema is (90).

“Social Realism and Agnès Varda’s Cinécriture” sets the framework for a long, hard look at Sans toit ni loi. Varda is introduced as a woman artist. Hers is the only film by a female director in this volume, which Vanderschelden attributes to the limitations of space and to Carrie Tarr’s comprehensive 2002 study (French Cinema and the Second Sex). I find space limits and an alternate, separate space for women’s work unconvincing as a rationale for including only one woman (or any other historically underrepresented group): better not to make excuses. Such would be the message of the recent Busson and Gayet documentary, Cinéast(e)s (2013). As the chapter demonstrates, Varda’s work belongs among the innovative cinematic post-1950 French all-stars. She investigates the cultural thematic of homelessness, social exclusion, and alienation. Vanderschelden sees Varda as probing “the ways in which people project their own stories onto others” (108).

After treating the unconventional subjects of Louis Malle’s films, Lacombe Lucien and Au revoir...