French Cinema and the Great War: Remembrance and Representation

by Marcelline Block (Editor), Barry Nevin (Editor)

Overview

Even a century after its conclusion, the devastation of the Great War still echoes in the work of artists who try to make sense of the political, moral, ideological, and economic changes and challenges it spawned. France, the military major power of the Western Front, carries the legacy of battles on its own soil, and countless French lives lost defending the nation from the Central Powers. It is no surprise that the impact of the First World War can still be seen in French films into the present day.

French Cinema and the Great War: Remembrance and Representation provides the first book-length study of World War I as it is featured in French cinema, from the silent era to contemporary films. Presented in three thematic sections—Recording and Remembering the Great War, Women at the Front, and Interrogating Commemoration—the essays in this volume explore the ways in which French film contributes to the restoration and modification of memories of the war. Films such as La Grande Illusion,King of Hearts, A Very Long Engagement, and Joyeux Noel are among those discussed in the volume’s examination of the various ways in which film mediates personal and collective memories of this critical historical event.

This volume will be an invaluable resource, not only to those interested in French Cinema or the cinema of the Great War, but also to those interested in the impacts of war, more generally, on the cultural output of nations torn by the violence, death, and destruction of military conflict.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442260986
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/04/2016
Series:	Film and History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	204
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Marcelline Block is lecturer in history at Princeton University. She is the editor of Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema (2010) and author of World Film Locations: Paris (2011).

Barry Nevinhas lectured on realist cinema and film theory, the classic French cinema (1930-1960), and modern French history. His research on Renoir’s pro-colonial propaganda will be published in Studies in French Cinema.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: The Great War: History and Memory Marcelline Block Barry Nevin xiii

I Recording and Remembering the Great War 1

1 Germaine Dulac's Le Cinéma au service de l'histoire (1935): World War I and the French Newsreel Maryann De Julio 3

2 War Changes Everything: The Reality of Illusion and Investitures of Power in Thomas l'imposteur (1965) and Ze Roi de coeur (1966) Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns 13

3 An Anti-Archive of World War I: Philippe de Broca's Le Roi de coeur (1966) Phillip John Usher 27

4 Expressing Pacifist Views through the Recovery of World War I's Silenced Voices in Jean-Jacques Annaud's La victoire en chantant (1976), Bertrand Tavernier's Capitaine Conan (1996), and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004) Henri-Simon Blanc-Hoàng 35

II Women at the Front 57

5 Unexpected Heroines in French and American Patriotic War Films: Une page de gloire (1915) and The Little American (1917) Clémentine Tholas-Disset 59

6 Women's Voices, Memory, and the War: Jean-Pierre Jennet's Un longdimanche de fiançailles (2004) Karen A. Ritzenhoff 77

7 "Love and Nothing But"* in La Vie el rien d'autre (Bertrand Tavernier, 1989) and Joyeux Noël (Christian Carion, 2005) Marcelline Block 97

III Interrogating Commemoration: Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937) 115

8 "Une mémoire de pierre": Spaces of Memory and Grammars of Remembrance in Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937) William Kidd 117

9 Re-membering the War: Masculinity and the Wounded Body in Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937) Julie M. Powell 131

10 The French Aristocracy at War in La Grande Illusion (1937) and La Règle du jeu (1939) Frederic Leveziel 147

11 "Un homme lui, un héros!": Commemorating the World War I Veteran in the Work of Jean Renoir Barry Nevin 165

Index 173

About the Editors and Contributors 177

Editorial Reviews

The close readings here are strong, and on the whole the writing is lively and concise, with chapters divided into three sections: Recording and Remembering the Great War; Women at the Front; and a third section devoted expressly to Jean Renoir's La Grande illusion (1937).

Journal of Popular Film and Television

[A] fantastic new book.

Culturethèque

The divergent theoretical, methodological and didactic approaches of the authors make the book a varied and interesting read for those interested in Film Studies, History or Francophone Studies.. .. Film is indeed a medium that can create as well as subvert popular consensus on the ‘facts’ of (the French) experience of World War I. And that is a very good reason to read this book and watch the films discussed in the different chapters.

French History

Block and Nevin have put together an excellent, ably edited collection of essays on French cinema and WW I. Though all the usual films that one might expect in such a collection are here, there are also some interesting outliers. One example is experimental filmmaker Germaine Dulac’s Le cinéma au service de l'histoire (1935), a rediscovered six-reel montage film using newsreels of the period to create a sort of collage of the events of the war. Among the more outré films are Une page de gloire (1915) and The Little American (1917), to say nothing of Philippe de Broca’s King of Hearts (1966), originally Le roi de coeur, a romantic comedy (set in the last days of the Great War) in which the inmates of an insane asylum escape and take over a small French village. Of course, no such book would be complete without Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937), perhaps the greatest antiwar film ever made, which is the subject of several essays. Including detailed footnotes, this admirable, compelling volume could also serve as a course text.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

Choice Reviews

Block and Nevin have put together an excellent, ably edited collection of essays on French cinema and WW I. Though all the usual films that one might expect in such a collection are here, there are also some interesting outliers. One example is experimental filmmaker Germaine Dulac’s Le cinéma au service de l'histoire (1935), a rediscovered six-reel montage film using newsreels of the period to create a sort of collage of the events of the war. Among the more outré films are Une page de gloire (1915) and The Little American (1917), to say nothing of Philippe de Broca’s King of Hearts (1966), originally Le roi de coeur, a romantic comedy (set in the last days of the Great War) in which the inmates of an insane asylum escape and take over a small French village. Of course, no such book would be complete without Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937), perhaps the greatest antiwar film ever made, which is the subject of several essays. Including detailed footnotes, this admirable, compelling volume could also serve as a course text. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

Choice

[A] fantastic new book.

Culturethèque

Block and Nevin have put together an excellent, ably edited collection of essays on French cinema and WW I. Though all the usual films that one might expect in such a collection are here, there are also some interesting outliers. One example is experimental filmmaker Germaine Dulac’s Le cinéma au service de l'histoire (1935), a rediscovered six-reel montage film using newsreels of the period to create a sort of collage of the events of the war. Among the more outré films are Une page de gloire (1915) and The Little American (1917), to say nothing of Philippe de Broca’s King of Hearts (1966), originally Le roi de coeur, a romantic comedy (set in the last days of the Great War) in which the inmates of an insane asylum escape and take over a small French village. Of course, no such book would be complete without Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937), perhaps the greatest antiwar film ever made, which is the subject of several essays. Including detailed footnotes, this admirable, compelling volume could also serve as a course text.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

CHOICE

The divergent theoretical, methodological and didactic approaches of the authors make the book a varied and interesting read for those interested in Film Studies, History or Francophone Studies. . . . Film is indeed a medium that can create as well as subvert popular consensus on the ‘facts’ of (the French) experience of World War I. And that is a very good reason to read this book and watch the films discussed in the different chapters.

Oxford University Press