Looking Through the Rearview Mirror

Probing the continuities and discontinuities of queer representation and expression in the vast, multiform corpus of French cinema up to 1945, this chapter celebrates moments of queer visual and auditory intimacy and pleasure in both celebrated and little-known or neglected films. It aims to prove that early French cinema, despite its all-too-evident heterosexist matrices and repressive tendencies (notably the negative and often highly crude, fetishizing stereotypes of the “homosexual,” “lesbian,” and “cross-dresser”), also discloses unpredictable and non-normative aesthetic spaces or “interzones”—of filiation, desire, and sensation—that resist easy categorization (social, cultural political), elude the gender fixities of the period, and are rich in radical ambiguity and queer suggestion, even subversion. A new, materialist, queer aesthetics and historiography is proposed that ties early French film production and spectatorship to abiding aspects of the French cinematic tradition such as cinephilia and film criticism.

Global and local rhetorics at a public-facing private company: Studiocanal and French cinema

This article utilizes Canal+’s film production and distribution subsidiary Studiocanal as a way to understand both companies’ impacts on French cinema since the formation of the subsidiary in the early 1990s. As such, the article is structured as a chronology and an analysis of the major films made in French and financed by Studiocanal in terms of their critical and popular reception. The article also examines the talent relationships underpinning this production and the trajectories of the various stars, writers, directors, and producers who worked on the films as well as the executives who oversaw them. Finally, the article analyzes the corporate rhetoric that was advanced by both Studiocanal and Canal+ over the years to position itself in the French and international markets. Synthesizing these branches of the analysis and noting certain cyclical patterns, the article argues that Studiocanal’s relationship to French cinema has been complex and changeable, at times limited in favor of pursuing the international market, at times devoting ample amounts of rhetoric and resources to pursuing success in its home market. Moreover, the article demonstrates that the company’s production activities have helped to mold a generation of French filmmakers and industry executives who have in turn gone on to influential careers. Looking forward, the article concludes by arguing that by virtue of its size and scale as a producer and distributor, Studiocanal will always be a significant player in French cinema.

The evolution of European stunt art (50–70s of the twentieth century)

The purpose of the article is to identify the specifics of the formation and development of stunt art in French cinema of the 1950-1970s; analyze the contribution to the process of formation in the European film industry stunt as a profession of French actors and performers of film stunts. Methodology. The scientific provisions of the article are reasoned at the level of the totality of general scientific methods of cognition and approaches of modern art history. The historical, analytical and typological methods were applied, which contributed to determining the specifics of the professionalization process of stunt art in the French film industry in the 1950-1970s, as well as the typological features of cinema stunts of the leading French stuntmen; a method of comparative analysis (to identify the characteristic signs of stunt activities before and after professionalization) and other. Scientific novelty. For the first time in Russian art criticism, the process of development and professionalization of stunt art in European cinema of the 1950-1970s has been studied. on the example of the evolution of French historical stunt scenes (films “cloak and sword”), adventure and detective films; reviewed and analyzed the professional activities of C. Carlier, R. Julien, J. Delamard and other French stuntmen of this period; revealed the influence of American stunt performers, the specifics of the development of French stunt art, as well as characterized the evolution of stunt techniques, the use of existing ones and the development of new safety methods for their implementation. Conclusions. The content and nature of professional stunt activities in the context of cinematic art are non-static, since its dynamism is determined by the stunt status in the continuous qualification system. The stunt man is the stunt developer, stunt coordinator (stunt director), and the head of the stunt troupe. In the 50–70s. XX century in French cinema, a complex process of professionalization of stunt art took place, the motivation of which was the need to assimilate professional knowledge, skills, abilities, and expand the experience of professional activity. The specifics of the French movie stunts by C. Carlier, R. Julien, J. Delamard, and I. Cipher are manifested in originality, exposure to the viewer with a degree of risk, and a specially refined aesthetics.

“Une force qui va”: Reflections on Gérard Depardieu in Danton

Taking as its starting point a 1978 article by film critic Molly Haskell, in which she described Gérard Depardieu as “tactile […] grasping, eating, touching, coming to physical terms with everything in sight”, this article considers a largely overlooked Depardieu role, as the committed revolutionary leader Georges Danton in Andrzej Wajda’s Danton (1983)—a historical role that reflects the actor’s commitment to the relevance of the Revolutionary politician and intellectual. By examining three key scenes, the article scrutinizes Depardieu’s acting style (body language, vocal delivery, movement choices) and demonstrates that he is committed to new ways of engaging with the ideological processes of acting. In Danton, Depardieu pivots between a familiar set of performative registers—physical menace and self-regarding sensitivity, timidity and flamboyance, innocence and cunning—so that the performance ultimately serves as a timely reminder of his enduring mythic status in French cinema.