The Arts
February 2017
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The ArtsJanuary 2019Francois Truffaut
by Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
First in a series designed to situate and explain the films of French directors. A concise, accessible and original reading of Truffaut's films. A timely evaluation of the films of a popular director whose work features on most A-level French syllabuses and on the majority of University French Studies programmes both in the UK and the USA .
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The ArtsJune 2011Alain Robbe-Grillet
by John Phillips, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
Placing Robbe-Grillet's filmic oeuvre in the related contexts of both his novelistic work and the different historical and cultural periods in which his films were made, from the early 1960s to the present, the book traces lines of influence and continuity throughout his work, which is shown to exhibit a consistent preoccupation with an identifiable body of themes, motifs and structures. Close readings of all the films are skilfully combined with a thematic approach, ranging across the entire filmic corpus. The book also contains chapters on cinematography and technique. Ultimately, this lucid, comprehensive and fascinating study shows Robbe-Grillet's contribution to the evolution of the cinematic art both in France and internationally to have been considerably more important than previously acknowledged. ;
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The ArtsFebruary 2007Mathieu Kassovitz
by Will Higbee, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
Mathieu Kassovitz is arguably the most important filmmaker to have emerged from French cinema in the past two decades. As a director, his work often engages with highly controversial socio-political issues whilst still managing to attract and connect with a popular audience - and, above all, with a youth audience. He is also one of the few contemporary French filmmakers who is capable of productively engaging with Hollywood, in terms of cinematic style, narrative and genre, yet still retaining his own identity as a French filmmaker. In addition to his directorial successes, Kassovitz has also achieved considerable critical and commercial success in France as a screen actor. His films - whether directed by or acted in, or both - show an astonishing variety, from his early Métisse (1993), his break-through, La Haine (1995) through to Jeunet's Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2000), Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopatre (2002) and Gothika (2003). Will Higbee's study is the first to explore of one of the most fascinating characters in French cinema. ;
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The ArtsApril 2007Henri-Georges Clouzot
by Christopher Lloyd, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
Despite his controversial reputation and international notoriety as a film-maker, no full-length study of Clouzot has ever been published in English. This book offers a significant revaluation of Clouzot's achievement, situating his career in the wider context of French cinema and society, and providing detailed and clear analysis of his major films (Le Corbeau, Quai des Orfèvres, Le Salaire de la peur, Les Diaboliques, Le Mystère Picasso). Clouzot's films combine meticulous technical control with sardonic social commentary and the ability to engage and entertain a broad public. Although his films are characterised by an all-controlling perfectionism, allied to documentary veracity and a disturbing bleakness of vision, Clouzot is well aware that his is an art of illusion. His fondness for anatomising social pretence, the deception, violence and cruelty practised by individuals and institutions, drew him repeatedly to the thriller as a convenient and compelling model for plots and characters, but his source texts and the usual conventions of the genre receive distinctly unconventional treatment. ;
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The ArtsAugust 2001Bertrand Blier
by Sue Harris, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
The most complete study of Blier's work to date, Harris traces the director's career from the early 1960s until the present. Outlines the forms, themes and style which dominate in Blier's work, and challenges the many labels that have been used to describe both the corpus of films and the man himself. Provides an original and controversial discussion of Blier's alleged 'misogyny', and invites the reader to understand the scatological and corporeal aspects of Blier's filmmaking in terms of long-established traditions of popular dramatic culture. Brings to light the comic mechanisms underpinning Blier's films and identifies strategies which navigate through one of the most entertaining and disconcerting bodies of work of recent years. The first book on Blier published in English. ;
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The ArtsNovember 2014Jacques Demy
by Darren Waldron, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
Saccharine for some, poignant for others, Jacques Demy's 'enchanted' world is familiar to generations of French audiences accustomed to watching Christmas repeats of his fairytale Peau d'âne (1970) or seeing Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac prance and pirouette in Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1966). Demy achieved international recognition with Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1963), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at Cannes. However, beneath the apparently sugary coating of his films lie more philosophical reflections on some of the most pressing issues that preoccupy Western societies, including affect, subjectivity, self/other relations and free will. This wide-ranging book addresses many of the key aspects of Demy's cinema, including his associations with the New Wave, his unique approach to musicals, his adaptations of fairytales, his representations of gender and sexuality and his legacy as an iconic director for generations of audiences and filmmakers. ;
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The ArtsOctober 2009Alain Resnais
by Emma Wilson, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
Alain Resnais, director of 'Hiroshima mon amour' (1959) and 'L'Annee derniere a Marienbad' (1961), has transformed the representation of memory, fantasy and desire in modern cinema. This illuminating introduction to his work, extending from his earliest documentaries to the musical films of the last decade, traces the evolving patterns of his filmmaking, its changing reflections on mortality, guilt, chance and human doubt. Exploring questions of the time-image, of trauma, of the senses, this volume sets Resnais' films in the context of important current debates in film theory, and provides a concise account of critical discussions of his work in France and beyond. Yet it also offers a highly personal and detailed engagement with individual images and scenes in Resnais' films. A passionate and partial defence of Resnais' work, old and new, this volume stands apart in its attention to the more tangible and moving pleasures of his films, their pathos, rigour and visual beauty. ;
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The ArtsDecember 2010Chantal Akerman
by Marion Schmid, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
Chantal Akerman is widely acclaimed as one of the most original and important directors working in Europe today. A towering figure in women's and feminist film-making, she has produced a diverse and intensely personal body of work ranging from minimalist portraits of the everyday to exuberant romantic comedies, and from documentaries and musicals to installation art. This book traces the director's career at the crossroads between experimental and mainstream cinema, contextualising her work within the American avant-garde of the 1970s, European anti-naturalism, feminism and the post-modern aesthetics. While offering an in-depth analysis of her multi-faceted film style, it also stresses the social and ethical dimension of her work, especially as regards her representation of marginal groups and her exploration of exilic and diasporic identities. Particular attention is given to the inscription of the Holocaust and of Jewish memory in her films. ;
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The ArtsSeptember 2008François Ozon
by Andrew Asibong, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
This is the first full-length study of the films of François Ozon, director of such diverse films as 8 femmes, Swimming Pool, 5x2 and Les amants criminels. Andrew Asibong's passionate and critical analysis focuses on the extent to which Ozon's seemingly light touch never ceases to engage with the fundamentally weighty issue of existential transformation, a transformation that affects both his protagonists and his audiences. A central question emerges: what is at stake, cinematically, ethically and politically, in Ozon's alternatively utopian and cynical flirtation with the construction and deconstruction of contemporary social relations. Revealing Ozon as a highly adept 'fan' of a whole range of thought, literature and cinema, Asibong places the precocious French auteur in an intellectual yet highly accessible critical framework, allowing Ozon's importance for a thoroughly postmodern filmgoing generation to be given the attention it deserves. ;
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The ArtsJanuary 2012Marcel Pagnol
by Brett Bowles, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
Though long ignored or dismissed by film critics and scholars, Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974) was among the most influential auteurs of his era. This comprehensive overview of Pagnol's career, the first ever published in English, highlights his unique place in French cinema as a self-sufficient writer-producer-director and his contribution to the long-term evolution of filmmaking in a broader European context. In addition to reassessing the converted playwright's controversial prioritisation of speech over image, the book juxtaposes Pagnol's sunny rural melodramas with the dark, urban variety of poetic realism practised by influential peers such as Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné. In his penchant for outdoor location shooting and ethnographic authenticity, as well as his stubborn attachment to independent, artisanal production values, Pagnol served as a precursor to the French New Wave and Italian Neo-Realism, inspiring the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Vittorio De Sica, and Roberto Rossellini. ;
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The ArtsJuly 2012Negotiating the auteur
Dominique Cabrera, Noémie Lvovsky, Laetitia Masson and Marion Vernoux
by Julia Dobson, Diana Holmes, Robert Ingram
This book provides the first detailed analysis of the work of four important contemporary directors whose work falls between the reductive labels of 'auteur cinema' and 'popular cinema'. Their work is contextualised within this timely investigation into the shifting relationship between the privileged status of the auteur and questions of genre, gender and cinematic production in France today. This important contribution to understanding the shifting landscapes of contemporary French film identifies an essential intermediacy in the films of these directors, which works to undo a series of dominant oppositions, generic template and contestation, public collectivity and personal intimacy, to offer a new perspective on the location of the political in contemporary French cinema. The four chapters provide detailed critical analysis of films by Dominique Cabrera, Laetitia Masson, Noémie Lvovsky and Marion Vernoux, and present common thread including the possible construction of social intimacy, the political demystification of romance narratives and the role of nostalgia, to argue that their work uses popular genres in order to challenge dominant cultural representation that resonates beyond the immediate parameters of contemporary French cinema. This book will be of interest to researchers working in French and European cinema, to students of Film Studies and French and Francophone Studies, and to film enthusiasts. ;
