It is often claimed that the French invented cinema, and although their prominence may have been supplanted by Hollywood today, the French film industry remains both prolific and highly lauded. Exploring the entire French cinematic oeuvre, Andrew teases out the distinguishing themes, to bring the defining features of French cinema to light.

• Introduction


• 1: The 'makeup' of French film and its demaquillage: Jeanne Moreau


• 2: The insurgency of the authentic and the regime of strong fathers : Jean Gabin


• 3: Renoir and Bresson: two incomparable sources


• 4: An intellectual cinema looks back to tradition and forward to the end of history


• 5: The school of the New Wave and the lessons it has taught


• Further reading


• Index

Dudley Andrew is Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University. Biographer of André Bazin, he extends Bazin's thought in both What Cinema Is! (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), and in the edited volume Opening Bazin (OUP, 2012). Working in aesthetics, hermeneutics, and cultural history, he published Film in the Aura of Art (Princeton University Press, 1984), before turning to French film with Mists of Regret (Princeton University Press, 1995) and Popular Front Paris (Harvard University Press, 2005). For these publications, he was named Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.