French cinema : from its beginnings to the present / Remi Fournier Lanzoni.

"An all-encompassing history of French motion pictures and cinematographic trends chronologically from 1895 to the present"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 577-584) and index.

The invention of motion pictures and the silent era of film. France at the turn of the twentieth century ; The invention of the Cinématographe ; Georges Méliés and the adventure of the film studio ; Growth of a national cinema : Charles Pathé and Léon Gaumont ; The invention of genres : Louis Feuillade and Max Linder ; Avant-garde cinema, French impressionism, and Surrealism : Louis Delluc, Abel Gance, Marcel L'Herbier, Luis Buñuel, and René Clair -- The golden age of French cinema. The style of the 1930s ; The "Talkies" ; French cinema and economic recession ; Verbal cinema or filmed language? Marcel Pagnol ; Beyond filmed theater : toward poetic realism ; Artists and masters of poetic realism : Jean Gabin, Arletty, Marcel Carné, Jean Renoir, and Jean Vigo ; Cinematography and the poetics of images -- French cinema of the Occupation. France in 1940 ; The exodus of French cinema celebrities ; French cinema and Vichy ; Propaganda and censorship : the case of Henri-Georges Clouzot ; Working conditions under the occupation : Marcel Carné ; Resistance and liberation -- The postwar era. The Fourth Republic and postwar France ; The Blum-Byrnes agreements ; The prestige of French cinema or cinema of prestige? Jean Cocteau ; A certain Tradition de qualité ; Comedy à la Française : Claude Autant-Lara ; Film noir or film d'ambiance : Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jacques Becker, and René Clément ; Toward a new cinema : Robert Bresson, Jacques Becker, and René Clément -- The years of the French New Wave. France during and after the events of 1958 ; The signs of change : Louis Malle ; Les cahiers du cinéma and the auteur theory ; The emergence of the New Wave : Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, and Agnès Varda ; The return of commercial movie successes -- French cinema of the 1970s. May '68 and after : a new cultural era ; Economic assessment of French cinema ; The "scandal" of the Cinémathèque Française ; Political cinema as a new genre : Louis Malle, Joseph Losey, and Costa-Gavras ; The last days of the French polar : Jean-Pierre Melville and Henri Verneuil ; The humanists' school : Claude Sautet, François Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer ; The storytellers : Bertrand Blier and Bertrand Tavernier -- The cinema of the 1980s. France in the 1980s ; French cinema of the 1980s : over one thousand films produced ; Transformations in the French film industry ; A new partner : television ; The old school of filmmakers : François Truffaut, Bertrand Tavernier, Bertrand Blier, and Maurice Pialat ; The super productions : Claude Berri and Jean-Jacques Annaud ; New directors for a new generation : Jean-Jacques Beineix and Luc Besson ; The rebirth of popular comedies : Coline Serreau and Claude Zidi -- French cinema in the Fin de Siècle. French society in the 1990s ; The improving health of French cinema ; A unique financial-aid system ; French television ; French cinema abroad ; New artists, new creators : Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro ; The epics : Régis Wargnier and Claude Berri ; Period dramas : Patrice Chéreau, Alain Corneau, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, and Patrice Leconte ; The return of comedies at the box office : Jean-Marie Poiré and Francis Veber ; The new French cinema -- le jeune cinéma : Mathieu Kassovitz and Eric Zonca ; The digital revolution and the high-definition system : Pitof -- The new millennium. France in the new millennium ; French film industry and the digital era ; The new generation of women filmmakers : Virginie Despentes, Catherine Breillat, and Noémie Lvovsky ; A national recognition for beur cinema : Rachid Bouchareb and Abdellatif Kechiche ; French cinema and international stardom : the French touch of Intouchables, Bienvenue chez les ch'tis and The artist -- Appendix: Awards and box office.

"An all-encompassing history of French motion pictures and cinematographic trends chronologically from 1895 to the present"--