Ben McCann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719091148
- eISBN:
- 9781526124111
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091148.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world’s great film filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his ...
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This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world’s great film filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his films that identify his key themes and techniques, trace patterns of continuity and change, and explore critical assessments of his work over time. Throughout a five-decade career, Duvivier zigzagged between multiple genres – film noir, comedy, literary adaptation – and made over sixty films. His career intersects with important historical moments in French cinema, like the arrival of sound film, the development of the ‘poetic realism’, the exodus to America during the German Occupation, the working within the Hollywood studio system in the 1940s, and the return to France and to a much-changed film landscape in the 1950s.
Often dismissed as a marginal figure in French film history, this groundbreaking book illustrates Duvivier’s eclecticism, technical efficiency and visual fluency in films such as Panique (1946) and Voici le temps des assassins (1956) alongside more familiar works like La Belle Equipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937). It will particularly appeal to scholars and students of French cinema looking for examples of a director who could comfortably straddle the realms of the popular and the auteur.Less
This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world’s great film filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his films that identify his key themes and techniques, trace patterns of continuity and change, and explore critical assessments of his work over time. Throughout a five-decade career, Duvivier zigzagged between multiple genres – film noir, comedy, literary adaptation – and made over sixty films. His career intersects with important historical moments in French cinema, like the arrival of sound film, the development of the ‘poetic realism’, the exodus to America during the German Occupation, the working within the Hollywood studio system in the 1940s, and the return to France and to a much-changed film landscape in the 1950s.
Often dismissed as a marginal figure in French film history, this groundbreaking book illustrates Duvivier’s eclecticism, technical efficiency and visual fluency in films such as Panique (1946) and Voici le temps des assassins (1956) alongside more familiar works like La Belle Equipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937). It will particularly appeal to scholars and students of French cinema looking for examples of a director who could comfortably straddle the realms of the popular and the auteur.
Margaret C. Flinn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380338
- eISBN:
- 9781781381571
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380338.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
From the fleetingly captured street scenes of the city symphony, to the meticulously reconstructed studio city of musical comedies; from the propagandistic Popular Front documentaries about ...
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From the fleetingly captured street scenes of the city symphony, to the meticulously reconstructed studio city of musical comedies; from the propagandistic Popular Front documentaries about construction workers, to poetic realism’s bittersweet portraits of populist neighborhoods: Social Architecture explores the construction, representation and experience of spaces and places in documentary and realist films of the French 1930s. In this book, Margaret C. Flinn tracks the relation between the emergent techniques of French sound cinema and its thematic, social and political preoccupations through analysis of discourse in contemporary press, theoretical texts and through readings of films themselves. New light is shed on works of canonical directors such as Jean Renoir, René Clair, Jean Vigo and Julien Duvivier by their consideration in relationship to little known documentary films of the era. Flinn argues that film has a readable architecture—a configuration of narrative and representations that informs, explains, and creates social identities, while reflecting upon the position of individuals within their societies.Less
From the fleetingly captured street scenes of the city symphony, to the meticulously reconstructed studio city of musical comedies; from the propagandistic Popular Front documentaries about construction workers, to poetic realism’s bittersweet portraits of populist neighborhoods: Social Architecture explores the construction, representation and experience of spaces and places in documentary and realist films of the French 1930s. In this book, Margaret C. Flinn tracks the relation between the emergent techniques of French sound cinema and its thematic, social and political preoccupations through analysis of discourse in contemporary press, theoretical texts and through readings of films themselves. New light is shed on works of canonical directors such as Jean Renoir, René Clair, Jean Vigo and Julien Duvivier by their consideration in relationship to little known documentary films of the era. Flinn argues that film has a readable architecture—a configuration of narrative and representations that informs, explains, and creates social identities, while reflecting upon the position of individuals within their societies.
Margaret C. Flinn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380338
- eISBN:
- 9781781381571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380338.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter addresses the spectacular and massive nature of the architecture of the films themselves—that is to say, the way in which the crowd functions metaphorically as a building block of social ...
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This chapter addresses the spectacular and massive nature of the architecture of the films themselves—that is to say, the way in which the crowd functions metaphorically as a building block of social cohesion. The stories being told by leftist militant filmmaking of the Popular front are analysed as a spatialized discourse where the crowd becomes a living construction. The portrayal of the worker as individual and member of the mass is crucially cinematographic: militant films cast their spectators as extensions of the films’ worlds. Furthermore, the visual rhetoric of these films opens avenues of insight into the spatial representations and politics of more mainstream products of 1930s cinema culture, such as Julien Duvivier’s La Belle équipe.Less
This chapter addresses the spectacular and massive nature of the architecture of the films themselves—that is to say, the way in which the crowd functions metaphorically as a building block of social cohesion. The stories being told by leftist militant filmmaking of the Popular front are analysed as a spatialized discourse where the crowd becomes a living construction. The portrayal of the worker as individual and member of the mass is crucially cinematographic: militant films cast their spectators as extensions of the films’ worlds. Furthermore, the visual rhetoric of these films opens avenues of insight into the spatial representations and politics of more mainstream products of 1930s cinema culture, such as Julien Duvivier’s La Belle équipe.
Michael Sragow
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780813144412
- eISBN:
- 9780813145235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813144412.003.0021
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
MGM hired Fleming to fix up The Great Waltz, a fictionalized account of the life and career of the composer Johann Strauss Jr. Frenchman Julien Duvivier directed the film, but MGM, unsatisfied with ...
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MGM hired Fleming to fix up The Great Waltz, a fictionalized account of the life and career of the composer Johann Strauss Jr. Frenchman Julien Duvivier directed the film, but MGM, unsatisfied with Duvivier’s work, asked Fleming to redo many of the scenes. Luise Rainer and Miliza Korjus were the female stars. This chapter summarizes Duvivier’s version and Fleming’s version and compares them both to the historical truth of Strauss’s life.Less
MGM hired Fleming to fix up The Great Waltz, a fictionalized account of the life and career of the composer Johann Strauss Jr. Frenchman Julien Duvivier directed the film, but MGM, unsatisfied with Duvivier’s work, asked Fleming to redo many of the scenes. Luise Rainer and Miliza Korjus were the female stars. This chapter summarizes Duvivier’s version and Fleming’s version and compares them both to the historical truth of Strauss’s life.
Hannah Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190635978
- eISBN:
- 9780190636012
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190635978.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, Theory, Analysis, Composition
Chapter 5 focuses on the role of diegetic music in early poetic realist films. Poetic realism, the filmmaking genre that emerged out of the politics of the mid-1930s, had its roots in transition-era ...
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Chapter 5 focuses on the role of diegetic music in early poetic realist films. Poetic realism, the filmmaking genre that emerged out of the politics of the mid-1930s, had its roots in transition-era films by filmmakers such as Jean Grémillon, Julien Duvivier, Jacques Feyder, and perhaps most notably, Jean Renoir. The soundtracks of these filmmakers tended to favor a “realistic” incorporation of music into the narrative, an aesthetic decision grounded in a broader preference for direct recording, and frequently featured popular songs and street musicians to enhance the realism of a film’s setting. But diegetic music in early poetic realist films was multivalent, revealing the emotions or thoughts of characters, providing narrative commentary, and at times going against the expectations of a scene’s mood or actions. Considering diegetic music in early poetic realist sound films shows the ways in which audiovisual realism and stylization worked hand in hand.Less
Chapter 5 focuses on the role of diegetic music in early poetic realist films. Poetic realism, the filmmaking genre that emerged out of the politics of the mid-1930s, had its roots in transition-era films by filmmakers such as Jean Grémillon, Julien Duvivier, Jacques Feyder, and perhaps most notably, Jean Renoir. The soundtracks of these filmmakers tended to favor a “realistic” incorporation of music into the narrative, an aesthetic decision grounded in a broader preference for direct recording, and frequently featured popular songs and street musicians to enhance the realism of a film’s setting. But diegetic music in early poetic realist films was multivalent, revealing the emotions or thoughts of characters, providing narrative commentary, and at times going against the expectations of a scene’s mood or actions. Considering diegetic music in early poetic realist sound films shows the ways in which audiovisual realism and stylization worked hand in hand.
Margaret C. Flinn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380338
- eISBN:
- 9781781381571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380338.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The epilogue considers the paradox of the poetic realist preoccupation with atmosphere. The characteristics of a film that spatially constitute “atmosphere” tend to engage localizing, situational ...
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The epilogue considers the paradox of the poetic realist preoccupation with atmosphere. The characteristics of a film that spatially constitute “atmosphere” tend to engage localizing, situational reality guarantors, but also the extremely ephemeral qualities of gasses—fog, smoke, etc. The thwarted spatialization accounts for the melancholy and alienation of poetic realist subjects.Less
The epilogue considers the paradox of the poetic realist preoccupation with atmosphere. The characteristics of a film that spatially constitute “atmosphere” tend to engage localizing, situational reality guarantors, but also the extremely ephemeral qualities of gasses—fog, smoke, etc. The thwarted spatialization accounts for the melancholy and alienation of poetic realist subjects.
