The Age of the Ship of the Line: The British and French Navies, 1650–1815 by Jonathan R. Dull (review)

conductor and his musicians, unjustly dispossessed of their musical livelihood during the Soviet era, as they seek amends by finally playing a concert in Paris. Débrouillards all, they create some of the funniest situations and vocabulary entanglements imaginable. SIFF’s Centerpiece Gala highlighted Christian Carion’s latest, L’Affaire Farewell . Historically, this little-known spy operation of the early 1980s in which a KGB officer gave French officials an extremely large quantity of information about Soviet intelligence activities in the West played a significant role in eventually bringing down the Soviet Union. Farewell is a well-written historical piece seasoned with elements of suspense. Emir Kusturica excels as the idealist Francophile Russian (admirer of Vigny’s proud, moribund wolf, and Léo Ferré’s music) who attempts to kill the system in order to force renewal. Guillaume Canet provides counterpoint as an “espion malgré lui.” In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot inexplicably abandoned filming his script, L’Enfer. In L’Enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot (César Best Documentary, 2010), film preservationist Serge Bromberg intersperses interviews of surviving crew members and modern readings of key scenes with excerpts from the 185 cans of surviving footage in order to explore what might have been. The resulting vision is doubly tantalizing: glimpses of experimentation with innovative visual and sound artistry; the portrait of a brilliant, but driven director, a workaholic insomniac , who made increasingly compulsive demands of his stars and crew. Some 83,000 votes were cast this year to determine the Golden Space Needle Audience Awards. French films ranked high in recognition. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs à tire-larigot was second runner-up for Best Film. A delight for fans of this director’s previous work, it contains all his hallmarks: talisman Dominique Pinon, touches of fantasy, fantastic Rube Goldberg inventions. The pacing leaves one breathless and a serious theme hides behind the laughter. The wave of enthusiasm provoked by the film voted best—sold-out regular screenings and two added; first runner-up recognition in both best director and actress categories—proves that Seattle still loves French cinema. Mona Achache’s L’Hérisson with Josiane Balasko in the title role enchanted. Many people know Muriel Barbery’s bestseller from which the film is “librement inspiré.” A gentle caution, therefore—see this film with an open mind. A close cousin if not a twin to the novel, it stands on its own merits, ultimately offering the same sage insights about the beauty to be found in the interconnectedness of human lives. University of Idaho Joan M. West, Emerita Society and Culture edited by Marie-Christine Koop DULL, JONATHAN R. The Age of the Ship of the Line: The British and French Navies, 1650– 1815. Omaha: UP of Nebraska, 2009. ISBN 978-0-80321-930-4. Pp. 250. $29.95. Le Redoutable, the French flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar that is pictured on the cover, provides a fitting illustration for this treatise on the huge wooden warships that dominated the almost 200-year-long struggle between Europe’s Reviews 833 great naval powers, Great Britain and France. Part of the series “Studies in War, Society, and the Military,” this book is written by Jonathan Dull, author of two award-winning histories of the French navy. Here, Dull sets out to explain the background, course, and results of the seven wars between the British and the French. On the first page of his tome, Dull appropriately supplies a description of the ships of the line: three-masted wooden ships that carried between 40 and 130 cannon. Dull also quickly reveals his admiration for such a vessel, which he depicts as “the most expensive, technologically advanced, and visually impressive weapon of its day” (1). In tandem, Dull explains the line of battle: a string of warships following each other, bow to stern, the tactic that, when combined with the ship of the line, composed the era to which the book is devoted. By page 5, this reviewer was already assured that the author was both knowledgeable and passionate about the topic, although not all British readers might agree with his dismissal of Nelson’s genius in his defeat of the French navy...