Masculine Singular

French New Wave Cinema

Auteur: Ross, Kristin; Sellier, Geneviève
Éditeur: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822341758
eISBN Pdf: 9780822388975
Lieu de publication: Durham , United States
Année de publication électronique: 2008
Mois : Mars
Pages: 280
DDC: 791.430944
Langue: Anglais

Légende

Masculine Singular is an original interpretation of French New Wave cinema by one of France’s leading feminist film scholars. While most criticism of the New Wave has concentrated on the filmmakers and their films, Geneviève Sellier focuses on the social and cultural turbulence of the cinema’s formative years, from 1957 to 1962. The New Wave filmmakers were members of a young generation emerging on the French cultural scene, eager to acquire sexual and economic freedom. Almost all of them were men, and they “wrote” in the masculine first-person singular, often using male protagonists as stand-ins for themselves. In their films, they explored relations between men and women, and they expressed ambivalence about the new liberated woman. Sellier argues that gender relations and the construction of sexual identities were the primary subject of New Wave cinema.

Sellier draws on sociological surveys, box office data, and popular magazines of the period, as well as analyses of specific New Wave films. She examines the development of the New Wave movement, its sociocultural and economic context, and the popular and critical reception of such well-known films as Jules et Jim and Hiroshima mon amour. In light of the filmmakers’ focus on gender relations, Sellier reflects on the careers of New Wave’s iconic female stars, including Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot. Sellier’s thorough exploration of early New Wave cinema culminates in her contention that its principal legacy—the triumph of a certain kind of cinephilic discourse and of an “auteur theory” recognizing the director as artist—came at a steep price: creativity was reduced to a formalist game, and affirmation of New Wave cinema’s modernity was accompanied by an association of creativity with masculinity.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Aesthetic Doxa on the New Wave
Chapter One: A New Generation Marked by the Emergence of Women
Chapter Two: Cinephilia in the 1950s
Chapter Three: Auteur Cinema: An Affair of State
Chapter Four: Contrasting Receptions
Chapter Five: The Precursors
Chapter Six: Between Romanticism and Modernism
Chapter Seven: Nostalgia for a Heroic Masculinity
Chapter Eight: The Women of the New Wave: Between Modern and Archaic
Chapter Nine: Jeanne Moreau: Star of the New Wave and Icon of Modernity
Chapter Ten: Brigitte Bardot and the New Wave: An Ambivalent Relationship
Chapter Eleven: The Independent Filmmakers of the Left Bank:A ‘‘Feminist’’ Alternative?
Conclusion: The New Wave’s Legacy: ‘‘Auteur Cinema’’
Appendix One: Box Office Results
Appendix Two: The Press
Notes
Bibliography
Index