French Film Noir - Hardcover

Buss, Robin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 071452963X ISBN 13: 9780714529639

Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

From the seething internal aftermath of the German Occupation to the stylish radicalism of the New Wave and the slick post-modern fantasies of today, French directors such as Melville, Becker, Godard, Truffaut, and Chabrol have adapted American crime movie conventions to create their own cinema of good and evil. Fully illustrated with stills from a wide selection of movies, French Film Noir also contains a complete filmography listing over 100 films.

Robin Buss writes for several newspapers and magazines. He has translated Jean Cocteau's The Art of Cinema for Marion Boyars. He lives in the UK.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Since the earliest days of cinema, filmgoers have delighted in the depiction of violence, criminality and sudden death. Evil, whether it is portrayed in psychological, social or spiritual terms, has long held a deep and lasting fascination for our culture. This wide-ranging study of film noir analyzes the peculiarly French contribution to the crime thriller/gangster movie genres inspired as they were by American crime films of the thirties and forties. The author shows how such directors as Melville, Becker, Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and Corneau have responded to the demand for films that are satisfying as fiction while at the same time preserving a plausible background of French life and society. From the German Occupation to the present day, Buss relates these films to French, American and British traditions of crime fiction, and shows how the genre has been used for pure entertainment and political and social comment. He pinpoints Parisian mobsters who use American-style tommy-guns and German stick grenades but follow their own codes and use their own heavily charged argot; and where the virtues of provincial life hide moral uncertainty and festering evil. French Film Noir contains in-depth studies of a number of works, including Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi and Chabrol's Le Boucher, the political thrillers of Costa-Gavras, Bresson's intimate ethical studies and Jean Luc Godard's reworking of the French movie hero, wise-cracking neanderthal private eye Lemmy Caution in Alphaville. He analyzes more recent works such as Patrice Leconte's Monsieur Hire, Bob Swain's La Balance together with Luc Bresson's Nikita and the Franco-Dutch production The Vanishing, both recently remodelled asbig-budget Hollywood movies. Fully illustrated with stills from the movies, French Film Noir contains complete details of the 100 most important films discussed, plot summaries and a filmography.

About the Author:

Robin Buss writes regular film and book features for several UK newspapers and magazines. His previous books include studies on French and Italian films, plus the translation of Jean Cocteau's The Art of Cinema (0-7145-2974-5) published by Marion Boyars in 1992.

About this edition

• Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 071452963X
• ISBN 13: 9780714529639
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224