Marja Warehime
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719068225
- eISBN:
- 9781781703267
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719068225.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter focuses on Maurice Pialat's relationship to the Nouvelle Vague and to two major filmmakers of the 1930s and 1940s against whose work Pialat measured his own: Jean Renoir and Marcel ...
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This chapter focuses on Maurice Pialat's relationship to the Nouvelle Vague and to two major filmmakers of the 1930s and 1940s against whose work Pialat measured his own: Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné. Pialat's outburst reflects his longstanding resentment over the fact that the young directors of the Nouvelle Vague had already begun to make names for themselves in the 1960s while he was still struggling to make films. His sense that he had not been given the same opportunities as the little group of friends at Cahiers led him to reject the Nouvelle Vague and belittle its importance. He turned elsewhere to find a model for a successful career in film, looking back to the popular cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, to films by major directors such as Pagnol, Carné or Renoir and the Saturday night cinema he had loved as a child. Yet the small-budget revolution associated with the Nouvelle Vague made it increasingly difficult for any filmmaker to aspire to a career in the mould of Pagnol or Carné.Less
This chapter focuses on Maurice Pialat's relationship to the Nouvelle Vague and to two major filmmakers of the 1930s and 1940s against whose work Pialat measured his own: Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné. Pialat's outburst reflects his longstanding resentment over the fact that the young directors of the Nouvelle Vague had already begun to make names for themselves in the 1960s while he was still struggling to make films. His sense that he had not been given the same opportunities as the little group of friends at Cahiers led him to reject the Nouvelle Vague and belittle its importance. He turned elsewhere to find a model for a successful career in film, looking back to the popular cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, to films by major directors such as Pagnol, Carné or Renoir and the Saturday night cinema he had loved as a child. Yet the small-budget revolution associated with the Nouvelle Vague made it increasingly difficult for any filmmaker to aspire to a career in the mould of Pagnol or Carné.
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/9781781380338.003.0008
- 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.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226870236
- eISBN:
- 9780226870175
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226870175.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Marcel Carné's film Les Enfants du paradis, which began in 1943 under the watchful eye of Vichy and the German occupiers, serves as an apt introduction to this book. The image of Paris as spectacle ...
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Marcel Carné's film Les Enfants du paradis, which began in 1943 under the watchful eye of Vichy and the German occupiers, serves as an apt introduction to this book. The image of Paris as spectacle stands for modernity and determines the way we perceive and represent the city in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book investigates how the public space of Paris was reshaped by the conflict of World War II, the postwar period of rebuilding, and the trente glorieuses of modernization between 1945 and 1975. It not only provides a wide-angle perspective on spatiality, but also creates a cohesive and tangible historic structure to this period of transition. The book emphasizes commonality of vision and thinking and captures this mental picture of Paris using a number of terms: nostalgic, poetic, humanistic, communistic, revolutionary, romanticized, and intensely emotive. It settles on “poetic humanism” and its counterpart, “poetic space,” as the idioms that most closely capture the spirit of this imagined landscape.Less
Marcel Carné's film Les Enfants du paradis, which began in 1943 under the watchful eye of Vichy and the German occupiers, serves as an apt introduction to this book. The image of Paris as spectacle stands for modernity and determines the way we perceive and represent the city in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book investigates how the public space of Paris was reshaped by the conflict of World War II, the postwar period of rebuilding, and the trente glorieuses of modernization between 1945 and 1975. It not only provides a wide-angle perspective on spatiality, but also creates a cohesive and tangible historic structure to this period of transition. The book emphasizes commonality of vision and thinking and captures this mental picture of Paris using a number of terms: nostalgic, poetic, humanistic, communistic, revolutionary, romanticized, and intensely emotive. It settles on “poetic humanism” and its counterpart, “poetic space,” as the idioms that most closely capture the spirit of this imagined landscape.
