French Film Theory and Criticism, Volume 2: A History/Anthology, 1907-1939. Volume 2: 1929-1939 (French Film Theory & Criticism) - Softcover

Abel, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691000638 ISBN 13: 9780691000633

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1993

Synopsis

These two volumes examine a significant but previously neglected moment in French cultural history: the emergence of French film theory and criticism before the essays of Andr Bazin. Richard Abel has devised an organizational scheme of six nearly symmetrical periods that serve to "bite into" the discursive flow of early French writing on the cinema. Each of the periods is discussed in a separate and extensive historical introduction, with convincing explications of the various concepts current at the time. In each instance, Abel goes on to provide a complementary anthology of selected texts in translation. Amounting to a portable archive, these anthologies make available a rich selection of nearly one hundred and fifty important texts, most of them never before published in English.

About this title

Review:

The second volume of Richard Abel's "history/anthology" of French film theory and criticism covers the period 1929-1939 and the transition from the silent to the sound film. In the years when Jean Renoir, René Clair, and Jean Vigo produced most of their masterpieces, the French debated intensely over the sociology and politics of the cinema as well as its use as a vehicle for fantasy and realism. Abel provides an overview of these debates in three probing and concise essays. He illustrates his analyses with excerpts from the writings of major French directors as well as authors like Jean Epstein, Marcel Pagnol, and Georges Sadoul.

About the Author:

Richard Abel is Professor of English at Drake University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0691000638
• ISBN 13: 9780691000633
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328