Unraveling French Cinema

Unraveling French Cinema provides a much needed introduction to the complexities of French film for students, cineastes, and the movie-loving public. Looks at the differences between French and American national cinema Explores how French directors shape their films around two potentially divergent goals: the narration of a story and an elaboration of some theory about film itself. Demystifies the "difficulty" of French cinema, allowing the American movie-goer to enjoy films that are too often perplexing at a first viewing. Offers extended analyses of classic, New Wave, and contemporary French films—including L'Atalante, Adele H., The Rules of the Game, and Cache.

Acknowledgments vi Introduction 1 1 Cinema and/as Poetry: L’Atalante’s Apples as Poems 13 2 Cinema and the Real: Renoir’s Rules 35 3 Cinema and/as Crime: Breaking the Law in The Children of Paradise, Pickpocket, and Breathless 54 4 Cinema and/as Mapping: Reorienting Ourselves Through Film 83 5 Cinema and/as Dream: Truffaut’s “Royal Road” to Adele H. 109 6 Cinema and/as Hypnosis: Jacquot’s Seventh Heaven 132 7 Cinema and/as Mourning: Anne Fontaine’s How I Killed My Father 148 8 Cinema and/as Terror: Michael Haneke’s Caché 165 9 Beautiful Fragments: Discontinuity and the French Cinema 179 Notes 193 References 212 Index 219