Masculine singular: French New Wave cinema

280 Pages·2008·1.245 MB·English

by  Sellier, Geneviève

Masculine Singular

Masculine
Singular
French New Wave Cinema
Geneviève Sellier
Translated by Kristin Ross
Duke University Press
Durham and London 2008
∫ 2008 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of
America on acid-free paper $
Designed by Jennifer Hill
Typeset in Carter and Cone Galliard by
Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data appear on the last
printed page of this book.
Contents
vii Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
The Aesthetic Doxa on the New Wave
11 Chapter One
A New Generation Marked by the Emergence of Women
22 Chapter Two
Cinephilia in the 1950s
34 Chapter Three
Auteur Cinema: An A√air of State
41 Chapter Four
Contrasting Receptions
Contents
70 Chapter Five
The Precursors
95 Chapter Six
Between Romanticism and Modernism
128 Chapter Seven
Nostalgia for a Heroic Masculinity
145 Chapter Eight
The Women of the New Wave: Between Modern and Archaic
184 Chapter Nine
Jeanne Moreau: Star of the New Wave and Icon of Modernity
199 Chapter Ten
Brigitte Bardot and the New Wave: An Ambivalent Relationship
vi 210 Chapter Eleven
The Independent Filmmakers of the Left Bank:
A ‘‘Feminist’’ Alternative?
221 Conclusion
The New Wave’s Legacy: ‘‘Auteur Cinema’’
225 Appendix One
Box O≈ce Results
227 Appendix Two
The Press
231 Notes
245 Bibliography
253 Index
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Noël Burch and Ginette Vincendeau for their intellectual
support and for their friendship throughout the period of time I spent
writing this book. My thanks to Michel Marie and Laurent Creton for their
attentive reading of the first draft. I am grateful to the Film Archives (Bois
d’Arcy) for making it possible for me to view its prints of Thérèse Des-
queyroux and Vacances portugaises.
For the American edition, my deepest thanks go to Kristin Ross and Alice
Kaplan. For its illustrations, I thank the Bibliothèque du Film in Paris.
I thank Alain Gresh for being by my side.

Introduction
The Aesthetic Doxa on the New Wave
What is striking about New Wave cinema is the fact that it gave rise to such
an abundant literature, beginning as soon as the movement itself began in
1959.∞ Essays and commentary about the New Wave appeared not only in
the mainstream press and in the journals that supported or critiqued the
movement—Cahiers du cinéma and Positif, respectively—but also, almost
instantaneously, in works written by André Labarthe in 1961, by Jacques
Siclier the same year, and by Raymond Borde, Freddy Buache, and Jean
Curtelin in 1962.≤ Outside the immediate cinematic milieu (which, by the
way, is still briskly tearing itself apart on the subject) New Wave cinema
immediately awoke the passionate interest of the academic world: witness,
for example, the investigation published in 1962 by a group of sociologists
headed by Edgar Morin, which attempted to evaluate the changes in film
representations linked to the emergence of the new cinema. The movement
was, from the outset, ‘‘overmediatized,’’ as we might say today, and it was