French Cinema: A Critical Filmography 1929–1939

French Cinema: A Critical Filmography 1929–1939 examines one of the most fascinating of all national cinemas during perhaps its most productive and turbulent decade. The talkie liberated French cinema from domination by Hollywood, but only to face the financial pressures of installing the new technologies, the economic crisis of the Depression, the political crisis of the rise of fascism and the unstable Socialist/Communist alliance of the Popular Front on the eve of the war. Crucial questions about the nature and function of the cinema were inevitably raised by these events: a socio-political cinema or an escapist cinema? Canned theatre or location cinema? A nationalised cinema or a capitalist cinema? An artform or a mass-audience popular entertainment?

Colin Crisp, one of the leading authorities on the period, provides us with its most detailed survey to date, examining its great directors—René Clair, Feyder, Vigo, Duvivier, Grémillon, Pagnol, Carné, Renoir—and actors—Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan, Jouvet, Arletty, Michel Simon, Jules Berry. Certain films clamour to be included in any such endeavour—L’Atalante and Sous les toits de Paris, Marius and Pepe le Moko, Quai des brumes and Le Jour se lève, La Grande Illusion and La Règle du jeu; while numerous others are rescued from an undeserved oblivion—Guitry’s lone stroke of cinematic genius, Le Roman d’un tricheur, Bernard-Deschamps’s hilarious Monsieur Coccinelle and Jean Dreville’s Le Joueur d’échecs. The films discussed include popular films and those typical of the genres of the era as well as its artistic masterpieces.