{"title":"Lesbian legibility and queer legacy in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019)","authors":"Clara Bradbury-Rance","doi":"10.1080/26438941.2022.2148375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2022.2148375","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As a story of painting – an artist falling in love with the subject of her portrait – Portrait de la jeune fille en feu/Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a film about representation itself, about the intensified spectatorship that comes with a sustained diegetic attention to the gaze. This article argues that rather than fulfilling the mainstream demands of the period romance to reveal lost histories of lesbianism, Sciamma’s film draws on her radical visual vocabulary to capture desire’s precariousness. This is the site of Portrait de la jeune fille en feu’s queerness: not (just) the explicit representation of a lesbian love story but rather a reckoning with cinema’s own role in making prohibited desires legible on-screen. Just as Gayatri Gopinath locates ‘queerness’ in ‘a specific spectatorial dynamic between the artist and the historical archive’, we can find queerness in Sciamma’s relationship to the visual archive of lesbian film history. This article argues that by reminding us of desire’s precariousness, Sciamma’s film demonstrates its own negotiations with ‘lesbian’ cinema whilst opening up ways to read a visual map of queer possibility.","PeriodicalId":40074,"journal":{"name":"French Screen Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"172 - 184"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45407253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Examining the past, looking to the future: perspectives on Algerian and Moroccan cinema","authors":"Rym Ouartsi","doi":"10.1080/26438941.2022.2123129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2022.2123129","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40074,"journal":{"name":"French Screen Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43290124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modernity and the machine in Ballet mécanique","authors":"Katherine Shingler","doi":"10.1080/26438941.2022.2106714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2022.2106714","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article aims to examine Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy’s Ballet mécanique (1924), focusing on its response to technological modernity. Firstly, it assesses the film’s ‘Purist’ leanings, and especially the notion that it provides moments of reprieve from the perceptual shock that typifies modern urban life. Following this, it provides a close examination of the relationship between the human and the machine in the film, considering whether it seeks to write out the human in favour of the mechanical, or to reconfigure the human with the model of the machine in mind. Finally, the article considers other ‘mechanisms’ at work in the film – the cinematic apparatus and the human psyche – and the figure of ‘Charlot’ (Charlie Chaplin) as an emblem of these. It ultimately suggests that Léger is mobilising some of the techniques of the earlier ‘cinema of attractions’ in order to capture anxieties around the effects of machine culture on the human beings living under its regime.","PeriodicalId":40074,"journal":{"name":"French Screen Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43680028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Martyr or saint? Body, image and acting style in Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc and Bresson’s Procès de Jeanne d’Arc","authors":"Hanne Schelstraete","doi":"10.1080/26438941.2022.2108573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2022.2108573","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Joan of Arc has inspired many works of art. The iconographical discourse of this artistic tradition is twofold: she is portrayed either as the homeland’s saviour or as a religious virgin. The cinematic adaptations by Carl Th. Dreyer and Robert Bresson – respectively La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (Dreyer, 1928) and Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (Bresson, 1962) – demonstrate, however, that the latter iconographical image is again twofold. Preferring an inexpressive acting style to emotional expression and fragmented bodily representation to bodily wholeness, Bresson portrays Joan as a saint who excels in faith and quietude. As in the literary tradition of the saint’s vita, Joan transcends the now, the physical and the emotional. In La Passion, Dreyer’s continuous emphasis on suffering and death contributes to the portrait of Joan as a martyr. Along with overt symbolic images, the emotional and facial expressiveness of lead actress Falconetti reflects the intense agony of Christ, who, throughout much of human history, has served as the ultimate example for martyrs themselves and artists, including authors working within the genre of the martyr’s passio. To both Dreyer and Bresson, the figure of Joan serves as a bridge, connecting disappointment with the present to passion for the historical.","PeriodicalId":40074,"journal":{"name":"French Screen Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47314546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘On n’est pas dans Black Mirror’: ambivalent optimism in Osmosis","authors":"P. Scott","doi":"10.1080/26438941.2022.2110747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2022.2110747","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40074,"journal":{"name":"French Screen Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44066518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hunting images: sub-Saharan Africa in early French cinema","authors":"Rachel Gabara","doi":"10.1080/26438941.2022.2095725","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2022.2095725","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Scholars of French cinema have paid little attention to early non-fiction films, particularly those shot in colonised spaces. Yet cameramen sponsored by major French cinema companies appeared in North Africa in the last years of the nineteenth century and south of the Sahara as early as 1906, eager to record images of newly conquered lands. This essay examines the first French films shot in West and Central Africa, from panoramas and views to travel to hunting narratives, with a particular focus on the career of self-proclaimed chasseur d’images [‘image-hunter’] Alfred Machin. Early cinema advertised France’s colonies to the metropole as, within a decade, sensationalised ethnography became tightly bound to propaganda for empire.","PeriodicalId":40074,"journal":{"name":"French Screen Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46246260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Michèle Morgan dans les années 1950 : une star controversée","authors":"Geneviéve Sellier","doi":"10.1080/26438941.2022.2074081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2022.2074081","url":null,"abstract":"RÉSUMÉ Michèle Morgan, après un exil de six ans à Hollywood pendant la guerre, retrouve la faveur du public français en 1946 avec le film de Jean Delannoy, La Symphonie pastorale et devient la star féminine n°1 en France pendant une décennie. En tête au box-office et couverte de récompenses, en couple à la ville avec Henri Vidal et associée à l’écran aux stars masculines les plus populaires, Jean Marais, Jean Gabin, Gérard Philipe, son image évolue par rapport à l’avant-guerre où elle incarnait la marginalité, la pureté et une forme – non menaçante – de résistance au patriarcat. Après-guerre, elle « s’embourgeoise » aussi bien dans ses personnages qu’à la ville, et sa soumission aux normes d’une féminité plus traditionnelle provoque des réactions contrastées dans le public, dont on trouve la trace dans le courrier des lecteurs de Cinémonde, le magazine de cinéma le plus populaire de la période.","PeriodicalId":40074,"journal":{"name":"French Screen Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"132 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46442327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Still beautiful’: Michèle Morgan in the 1960s","authors":"G. Vincendeau","doi":"10.1080/26438941.2022.2074083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2022.2074083","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines Michèle Morgan’s films of the 1960s, the last phase in her long career, and one hitherto ignored by film history, largely on account of the dearth of auteur films in the star’s late filmography. Morgan’s 1960s films are explored against three contexts: the impact of the New Wave on popular cinema (in particular the arrival of youth culture); the changing social context, especially as it affected women; and the importance of age, given that Morgan was 40 at the beginning of the decade. Morgan’s films are shown to divide into two main strands: on the one hand, large-budget omnibus or ensemble films, mostly in light comic mode, and on the other hand, smaller-scale dramas in which she is systematically paired with a younger actor in a romantic relationship that is on the whole doomed. The article argues that the films’ deployment of Morgan’s star persona as the elegant bourgeois woman opposite younger actresses betrays society’s ambivalence towards the younger generation. At the same time, while Morgan is depicted as an attractive, sexually active, desiring woman in practically all the films, the narratives articulate a recurrent unease with the ‘older’ woman’s sexual identity.","PeriodicalId":40074,"journal":{"name":"French Screen Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"208 - 227"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47407199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"La persona de Michèle Morgan à l’épreuve de la couleur : Obsession, Les Grandes manœuvres, Marguerite de la nuit, 1954–1955","authors":"Jean Montarnal","doi":"10.1080/26438941.2022.2074077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2022.2074077","url":null,"abstract":"RÉSUMÉ Au milieu des années 1950, lors de ses premiers films en couleurs, Michèle Morgan, alors au sommet de sa carrière, doit confronter sa « cinégénie » à la couleur et adapter ses personnages à son âge réel, 35 ans. Les trois films qu’elle tourne alors, Obsession de Jean Delannoy, Les Grandes manœuvres de René Clair et Marguerite de la nuit de Claude Autant-Lara, apportent des réponses convergentes à ces difficultés car ils montrent, selon nous, comment la couleur permet de prolonger et de renouveler sa persona. En effet, l’usage de la couleur magnifie son statut de star en mettant en valeur l’apparence physique et l’élégance vestimentaire de l’actrice. Mais il permet aussi de mettre en scène les contradictions sociales que représente Morgan à travers des personnages certes en situation d’autonomie affective et professionnelle mais dépendant en grande partie d’un pouvoir masculin. Ces contradictions se perçoivent dans la dialectique chromatique qui se joue entre l’actrice et son environnement. La couleur est enfin le moyen de figurer les tensions affectives et morales des personnages joués par Morgan, des femmes écartelées entre le conformisme imposé par la société et la quête d’une passion amoureuse idéale.","PeriodicalId":40074,"journal":{"name":"French Screen Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":"174 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49454185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}