The Social Architecture of French Cinema, 1929–1939 par Margaret C Flinn (review)

particularités de films (étude rapide de la genèse de Libera me; commentaires très personnels sur les fenêtres ouvertes dans Pierre Bonnard, le bonheur de peindre; survol de parcours de femmes de Thérèse à Irène); d’autres sont plus spécifiquement cinématographiques (deux chapitres sur “le récit express” et la “forme minimale” se font écho et auraient pu servir de trame au volume). Une des faiblesses de Alain Cavalier, en dehors de l’absence de filmographie, est que n’importe quelle communication sur l’homme et son travail aurait pu y être incluse. Les journées d’étude sont des moments propices aux rencontres et aux discussions; elles peuvent donner lieu à des échanges fructueux et des compilations édifiantes. Mais les plus utiles sont celles qui sont articulées en véritable travail de synthèse. Cavalier méritait mieux. Hamilton College (NY) Martine Guyot-Bender Flinn, Margaret C. The Social Architecture of French Cinema, 1929–1939. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2014. ISBN 978-1-78138-033-8. Pp. x + 244. £75. The‘social architecture’ of the title“refers to the literal construction of place, as in a film’s set design or the erection of a building, and also to the metaphorical ways in which the formal structure of films, their narratives, and their representations are organized” (2). Flinn’s analytical focus alternates between classics of the period—Sous les toits de Paris (René Clair, 1930), Boudu sauvé des eaux (Jean Renoir, 1932), L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934), La belle équipe (Julien Duvivier, 1936)—and less well-known documentaries or militant films. The architectural metaphor extends productively to the strategic use of crowd scenes in many films of the latter category, such as the 1936 La vie est à nous (a collaborative directing project that included Renoir):“The construction of the crowd may be understood as following a rudimentary architectural logic where— like building blocks—individual images (images of individuals) are progressively combined to create the crowd as a collective force” (149). Flinn’s analysis of La belle équipe pertinently points out that the famous singing scene (“Quand on se promène au bord de l’eau,”led by Jean Gabin’s character before becoming a collective celebratory refrain) in this avowedly ‘apolitical’ film “echoes the building-block montage tactics in the militant leftist films [...] where individuals are singled out within the crowd and then reinserted into the mass”(166).While most of this study is devoted to spatial representation in French films of the 1930s (through the use of set design, but also lighting or the use of depth of field), examples of close examination of dialogue are also found, as in the case of Jean Epstein’s politically-oriented documentary Les bâtisseurs (1938), which includes“a curious reconstruction of French history as seen through the imagined eyes of construction workers”(95).Among the notable insights is the contrast between Clair’s elaborate creation,in his early 1930s studio films,of“a particularly Parisian world”(41) that remains recognizable and influential to this day, and Vigo’s largely negative representation of an aridly commercialized Parisian urban landscape in L’Atalante. One 198 FRENCH REVIEW 89.2 Reviews 199 minor quibble, aside from the very few typographical errors (“emmagasinser” [23]; “some rightest tendencies” [162]): While the innovative subscription-based financing system of Renoir’s La Marseillaise (1937) is mentioned (139–40), this reviewer would have liked to see more discussion of this relatively little-studied film within the conceptual framework of the construction of ‘social architecture.’ That said, Flinn’s book is a valuable and original contribution to research on one of the most important periods of French film history. Western Washington University Edward Ousselin Frey, Hugo. Nationalism and the Cinema in France: Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945–1995. New York: Berghahn, 2014. ISBN 978-1-78238-365-9. Pp. 242. $95. Le but de cet ouvrage est d’éclairer les liens qui existent entre le cinéma en France et les notions d’identité nationale et politique dans un contexte historique. L’auteur se penche sur des périodes précises qui ont marqué l’histoire de France: décolonisation, après...