FRENCH CINEMA IN THE 21st CENTURY Welcome to the course! Dr. Mary Harrod, University of Warwick m.g.m.harrod@warwick.ac.uk • Background, contexts, course rationale •What is the relationship between film and society in France? •Overview of the state of the French nation in the 21st century •Overview of the state of the French film industry over the same period French Comedy: the Case of Amélie •Positioning, context, stylistic predecessors •Reception, ideology, genre • • • • A (Post)National Mainstream Industry Lecture 1: Comedy and French Identity Cinema as a Barometer of the Nation? •The ‘state-of-the-nation film’ – see John Hill, British Cinema in the 1980s (Clarendon Press, 1999). • •E.g. • • •Engaged with contemporary social reality • •Dealing with ‘gritty’ social issues • •Filmed in a broadly realist style in terms of mise-en-scène in particular: location shooting, naturalistic lighting, a ‘vernacular’ style of acting. •Growing wealth divide Post-2000 economic slowdown and growing inequality See Ludivine Bantigny (2013), La France à l’heure du monde: de 1981 à nos jours (Paris: Editions du Seuil) Only aggravated by the 2007-8 global financial crisis, COVID-19 (from 2019/20) and most recently the cost-of-living crisis. > Resentment; left-wing ideologies especially question the wealth divide. • • • ‘Put the unemployed first!’ 21st-Century France: Some Key Shifts • •Increased resentment of France’s large immigrant population • Successes by the Right-wing National Front (Rassemblement national) in successive elections; problems exacerbated by extremist terrorists. •Ongoing and growing fears about globalisation and secondarily Europeanisation 21st-Century France: Some Key Shifts 2 • • •Apocalyptic narratives about the decline of France as a nation. Present since the end of Empire, these have gathered force e.g. oLa France qui tombe, Nicolas Bavarez 2004 oQuand la France disparaît du monde!, Nicolas Tenzer 2008 oL’Identité malheureuse, Alain Finkielkraut 2013 oMélancolie française, Eric Zemmour, 2010 oLe Suicide français, Eric Zemmour, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV4IK7yC56Y Linked also to Europe’s decline as a world power. See also Sarah Waters, 'The 2008 Economic Crisis and the French Narrative of National Decline: Une causalité diabolique,' Modern & Contemporary France Vol 21, No 3 . 21st-Century France: Some Key Shifts 3 Extract from Jonathan Fenby’s The History of Modern France (Simon and Schuster 2016), p. xxvi. • • •Changes in the private sphere, related to women’s increased access to greater equality. • 21st-Century France: Some Key Shifts 4 • In traditionally patriarchal, Catholic France, women make up 47% of the workforce in 2020 (Évolution de la population active − Emploi, chômage, revenus du travail | Insee). The Paradoxes of French Cinema ‘a vigorous industry but also a subsidized artform; a field with intellectual ambitions that also courts widespread popularity; a craft extending from idiosyncratic experiments to commercial operations; a medium identified with a local audience yet one that also allows France to export itself on-screen around the globe, even to America’ Tim Palmer, ‘The Contemporary French Film Ecosystem’ (see further reading suggestions), p. 2. Total French films produced 100% French-financed 1995 97 63 2000 145 111 2005 187 126 200 2009 182 137 (taken from p. 8) See also CNC France for up-to-date film statistics Soutien à la création cinéma, séries, TV, jeu vidéo | CNC Palmer cont.: A Booming Industry The Best-selling Films on the French Market since 2000 Extracted from a list of the 100 best-sellers, Internet Movie Database. See M. Harrod and P. Powrie, ‘New directions in contemporary French comedies: from nation, sex and class to ethnicity, community and the vagaries of the postmodern,’ Special Issue of Studies in French Cinema on contemporary French comedy, vol. 18, issue 1. Resistance to the Perceived Acceleration in Commercialising French Film Culture Darren Waldron and Isabelle Vanderschelden have argued suspicious attitudes towards popular cinema have only been exacerbated in recent years by a French critical tendency among cinephilic critics to equate so-called commercial filmmaking with ‘a multifaceted crisis’ linked to inflated production costs and shorter cinema runs. E.g. Jean-Michel Frodon in articles in the auteurist-cinephilic journal Cahiers du cinéma from 2005 onwards. Waldron, D. and I. Vanderschelden. 2007. ‘Introduction.’ In D. Waldron and I. Vanderschelden (eds), France at the Flicks: Trends in Contemporary French Popular Cinema. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp.1-15, p. 8. Lol.jpg Le Petit Nicolas.jpg Neuilly sa mere.jpg OSS.jpg For top domestic hits historically see also: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls057849414/ 2014 2009 Representative Big-budget International Successes: Heritage Bio-pics 2007 And Some Internationally Successful Auteur Films Amélie as extending the notion of the comédie d’auteur? This term is coined by Raphaëlle Moine, ‘Reconfigurations génériques de la comédie dans le cinéma français contemporain,’ in Le Cinéma français face aux genres, Paris: Association française de recherche sur le cinéma, 2005, pp. 214-223. Cf. Jeunet’s earlier work e.g. Delicatessen (Jeunet and Caro, 1991) Clip – opening. Photographs by Robert Doisneau (1912-1994) Retro Aesthetic Influences on Amélie Poetic Realist films of the 1930s and 40s e.g. Hotel du Nord (Carné, 1938) Le Quai des brumes/Port of Shadows (Carné, 1938) CLIP Le jour se lève/Daybreak (Carné, 1939) •‘Not reproducing reality so much as recreating it, stories in these films are anchored to defined social settings, but aim to convey “essential” human truths that transcend social realities. Poetic realism undervalues a film’s direct links with the material world in order to explore the symbolic resonances which that world – when photographed – is capable of releasing’ (Baron Turk 1989: 109) •Often featured vulnerable young women. •Creation of an intimate ambience through set design. (Andrew 1995: 186). • • •‘The development of panchromatic film allowed a greater control of shadow and light in the studio and aided the presence of typical motifs, such as glistening cobbles, rain-spattered pavements, and dark shadows.’ (McCann 2017: 54-5) •‘France has become an imaginary realm available only through loss, exile, and nostalgia’ (Andrew 1995: 230) Retro Aesthetic Influences on Amélie Reception of Amélie: a Divided Picture •Global box office blockbuster (8.5 million French spectators, over $33m taken in US) •BUT frequently critically derided e.g. Serge Kaganski, ‘ «Amélie», pas jolie ,’ Libération, 31 May 2001 ‘Jeunet est sous l'emprise d'une telle volonté de maîtrise et de contrôle absolu de ses images que ses films ne respirent plus, que son monde paraît être filmé sous cloche. Amélie Poulain fait ainsi penser à ces boules de neige enfermant les monuments de Paris que l'on vend dans les boutiques de souvenirs kitsch. Jeunet is so anxious to have total control over every single frame that his films become suffocating: his worlds are imprisoned under glass. AP makes you think of one of those snow-globes with Parisian monuments inside you find in shops selling kitsch souvenirs. […] Kaganski Continued […] Que vois-je dans le Montmartre de Jeunet? Des Français aux patronymes qui fleurent bon le terroir. Je vois aussi un beur désarabisé qui s'appelle Lucien. Mais où sont les Antillais, les Maghrébins, les Turcs, les Chinois, les Pakis, etc? Où sont ceux qui vivent une sexualité différente? Où sont les Parisiens qui peuplent la capitale en 1997 (année où est censé se passer le film)?’ What do I see in Jeunet’s Montmartre? French people with ‘good old-fashioned French’ names. I also see a de-Arabized ‘beur’ called Lucien. But where are the Antilleans, North Africans, Turks, Chinese, Pakistanis and so on? Where are the LGBTQ+ individuals? Where are the Parisians of 1997 (the year when the film’s meant to take place)? A Couch in New York Chantal Akerman, 1996 Reines d’un jour (‘Queens for a Day’) Marion Vernoux, 2001 Venus Beauty Salon Tonie Marshall, 1999 CLIP Coline Serreau, 1989 Early French Romcoms Decalage horaire 2.jpg Jet-Lag Danièle Thompson, 2002 See also: Rollet, B. 2008. ‘Transatlantic Exchanges and Influences: Décalage horaire (Jet Lag), Gender and the Romantic Comedy à la française.’ In S. Abbott and D. Jermyn (eds), Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 92-104. Textové pole: Palais Royal, Valérie Lemercier, 2005 • Hors de prix.jpg Prete-moi ta main.jpg 2001 I Do, 2006 Priceless, 2006 Heartbreaker, 2010 2012 Consolidation of the Genre Post-2000 Quatre etoiles.jpg Four Stars, 2006 Post-2015: see Netflix e.g. The Hookup Plan, I Am Not an Easy Man…. Ambivalent Endings Or do you agree with Moore that Amelie is a ‘borderline sociopath’ and the film’s ending constitutes ‘a series of seemingly incoherent (or irrational) images’ (pp. 16-17) ‘The end of the film […] brings the hitherto star-crossed lovers together, the sheer predictability of their union, the “fabulous”, storybook fulfilment of Amelie’s “destin”, recalls the ending of countless Hollywood films’ (Ezra, p.301). C:\Users\Mary\Documents\Thesis book\Images\FROM FRANCE WITH LOVE - Images\1.jpg Amélie: Romance or Realism? For Michelle Scatton-Tessier, Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain is ‘well anchored in its socio-historical and cinematic period, exploiting the same issues of loneliness and isolation found in recent French new social cinema’. In ‘Le Petisme, Flirting with the Sordid in Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain.’ Studies in French Cinema 4, no.3 (2004): 197-207, p. 197. Isolating Camerawork The Idea of a Nation Benedict Anderson on the nation as an ‘imagined political community’, formulated through technology and modernity: ‘[It] is imagined because even the members of the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each there lives the image of the communion.’ Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (first published in 1983)) Amélie and the National Body National identity a key area of signification for filmic discourse, just as film and now television are key signifiers for constructions of national identity both inside and outside the nation – though not always through co-extensive versions. UK poster French poster US poster Amélie and ImpersoNation (Elsaesser 2005) ImpersoNation refers to films designed to play to ‘the look of the other’ (2005, 49). Additional Bibliography •Dudley Andrew, Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. • •Edward Baron Turk, Child of Paradise: Marcel Carné and the Golden Age of French Cinema, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. • •Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. • • •Elizabeth Ezra, ‘The Death of an Icon: Le Fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain.’ French Cultural Studies 15, no. 3: 301-10. •Ben McCann, Julien Duvivier, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017.