When political and civil unrest threatened France's social order in the 1950s, French cinema provided audiences a unique form of escapism from such troubled times: a nostalgic look back to the France of the nineteenth century, with costume dramas set in the age of Napoleon and the Belle Époque. Film critics, however, have routinely dismissed this period of French cinema, overlooking a very important period of political cultural history. French Costume Drama of the 1950s redresses this balance, exploring a diverse range of films including Guitry's Napoléon (1955), Vernay's Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1943), and Becker's Casque d'Or (1952) to expose the political cultural paradox between nostalgia for a lost past and the drive for modernization.

Susan Hayward is Chair of Cinema Studies and Director of Film Studies at the University of Exeter. She is the author of numerous books on French Cinema including Les Diaboliques (2006), French National Cinema (2005); Simone Signoret: The Star as Cultural Sign (2004), Luc Besson (1998). She is also the author of the successful Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (2005 - now in its third edition).

Part One

Contexts

Setting out the terrain: Genre and history

Setting out the terrain: Technologies, technicians and stars

Part Two
Belle Epoque Mania: Paris, the Provinces and Biopics

Belle Epoque films: An overview

Parisian society of the Belle Epoque through film

Truth and lies and the pursuit of marriage: Love-intrigues outside Paris

Making li(v)es: Belle Epoque biopics

Part Three
Representing History: Epics, Courtesans and Master Narratives 1796-1888

Setting the terrain: France 1796-1888

Representing History: 1796-1814 Napoléon Bonaparte/Napoleon

Restoration-July Monarchy: 1814-1848

Epic Grandeur: Part One, Philanthropists

Epic Grandeur: Part Two, Avengers

From the Second and the Third Republic: Innovation, Corruption and New Identities

The Second Empire in the Pink

The Second Empire in the Raw

From Empire to Republic: A Modernised France Emerging

Censoring the Classics: Bel-Ami Louis Daquin (1954; released 1957)

Part Four
Fairytales, Foxy Women and Swashbuckling Heroes

Costume Drama from late-Medieval to the Eighteenth Century: An Overview

Mysterious Microcosms: Three Fairytales

Foxy Women: Queens, Mistresses and Minxes

Swashbuckling Heroes

Conclusion