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Reconsidering directorial authorship in the classic French cinema’s Tradition of Quality | Seminar -23/02/23 @4pm | ORB124|

20 Feb 2023

Reconsidering directorial authorship in the classic French cinema’s Tradition of Quality

By Barry Nevin, Technological University Dublin

4-5pm on Thursday 23 February in ORB 1.24

 

Whereas auteurist frameworks have evolved considerably since Cahiers du cinéma promulgated the politique des auteurs during the 1950s, the French and Francophone directors who were relegated by the politique – whether explicitly or implicitly – to the lowly ranks of the inartistic metteur en scène remain underdiscussed. This paper responds to this neglect in two stages. First, it provides a brief overview of debates regarding authorship and ‘quality’ cinema in French film theory and criticism from the silent era to the 1950s. Second, it examines the films of Jacques Feyder (Crainquebille, 1922; Le Grand jeu, 1934; Pension Mimosas, 1935). Although Feyder was one of France’s leading directors during the interwar period, both the high production values boasted by his films and the importance of talented screenwriters and set-designers to his visual style rendered his legacy vulnerable to one of Cahiers du cinéma’s most outspoken critics, François Truffaut, and his work demands further discussion. Without overlooking the importance of writers and technicians to Feyder’s films, this paper suggests that his dialectical approach to gender representation goes part of the way in explaining how he inscribed his own directorial signature across a wide range of genres and styles. In doing so, it aims to demonstrate the importance of reassessing previously maligned directors of the classic French cinema.

 

Barry Nevin is a lecturer at Technological University Dublin. His research focuses on representations of family, class and colonialism in the classic French cinema. He is the author of Cracking Gilles Deleuze’s Crystal: Narrative Space-Time in the Films of Jean Renoir (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), and his research has appeared in journals including French StudiesFilm History, SubStance and Modern & Contemporary France. Recent publications include a special issue of Contemporary French Civilization, co-edited with Aoife Connolly and Clíona Hensey, which focuses on literature and film of the Algerian War in light of the Stora report. He is preparing a themed issue of French Screen Studies, which focuses on directorial authorship in French cinema’s post-war Tradition of Quality, and a monograph on Golden-era director Jacques Feyder, which is under contract to Manchester University Press. He currently serves as co-editor of the Irish Journal of French Studies.

 

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Department of French

Room 1.22 Block A, First Floor, O'Rahilly Building, University College Cork

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