In French Musical Culture and the Coming of Sound Cinema, author Hannah Lewis argues that debates about sound film resonated deeply within French musical culture of the early 1930s, and conversely, that discourses surrounding French musical styles and genres shaped cinematic experiments during the transition to sound.

• Acknowledgments


• Abbreviations


• Introduction


• 1. Imagining Sound Film: Debates in the Press


• 2. Surrealist Sounds: Film Music and the Avant-Garde


• 3. "An achievement that reflects its native soil": Songs, Stages, Cameras, and the Opérette Filmée


• 4. Théâtre filmé, Opera, and Cinematic Poetry: The Clair/Pagnol Debate


• 5. Source Music and Cinematic Realism: Jean Renoir and the Early Poetic Realists


• 6. "The Music Has Something to Say": The Musical Revisions of L'Atalante (1934)


• Conclusion: Alternative Paths for Sound Film


• Select Filmography


• Select Bibliography


• Captions

Hannah Lewis, Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Texas at Austin, is a historical musicologist who specializes in film music, music and visual media, early twentieth-century French music, and musical theater.