On completion of this module students should be able: - To analyse a number of key films from the 1930s;-To identify the stylistic and thematic specificity of a number of directors;-To identify and analyse a number of general trends in 1930s filmmaking;-To identify and analyse relevant aspects of the French film industry of the 1930s;-To evaluate the influence of relevant aspects of the broader political context of the 1930s on French film production;-To write in an extended and informed way on the subject.

Key themes include :
The relations between cinema, history and politics
The influence of avant-garde cinema
Poetic realism
Popular Front cinema
The contribution of émigré filmmakers and technicians
The function of the star
The relevance or otherwise of ‘auteur’ theory to the period

Set Films:
Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, L’Age d’or (The Golden Age) (1930)
René Clair, À nous la liberté (Freedom for Us) (1931)
Jean Vigo, L’Atalante (1934)
Jean Renoir, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange) (1935)
Julien Duvivier, Pépé le Moko (1936)
Marcel Carné, Le Jour se lève (Daybreak) (1939)
Jean Renoir, La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) (1939)

Students should also acquaint themselves with the following additional films in the course of the semester:

René Clair, Sous les toits de Paris (Under the Roofs of Paris) (1930)
Alexander Korda/Marcel Pagnol, Marius (1931)
Jean Renoir, La Vie est à nous (Life Belongs to Us) (1936)
Julien Duvivier, La Belle Équipe (They Were Five)(1936)
Jean Renoir, La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion) (1937)

All films are available for viewing in subtitled versions on DVD from the UCD library.

Select General Bibliography:

Abel, Richard (ed.), French Film Theory and Criticism 1907–1939, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
Andrew, Dudley, ‘Poetic Realism’, in Mary Lea Bandy (ed.), Rediscovering French Film (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1983), pp. 115–19.
_____________, Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Barsacq, Léon, Caligari’s Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions: A Study of Film Design (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1976).
Bazin, André, Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? (Paris: CERF, 1958).
Bazin, André, ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, in What is Cinema?, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), vol. I, pp. 9–16.
___________, ‘The Destiny of Jean Gabin’, in What is Cinema?, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), vol. II, pp.176–78.
Benjamin, Walter, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt (London: Fontana/Collins, 1970), pp. 219–53.
Burch, Noël and Sellier, Geneviève, La Drôle de guerre des sexes du cinéma français 1930–1956 (Paris: Nathan, 1996).
Chardère, Bernard, Le Cinéma de Jacques Prévert (Paris: Le Castor Astral, 2001).
Deleuze, Gilles, Cinéma, 2 vols (Paris: Minuit, 1983–85).
Dyer, Richard, Stars (London: BFI, 1979).
Elsaesser, Thomas, ‘Pathos and Leave-Taking: The German Émigrés in Paris during the 1930s’, in Sight and Sound, 53: 4 (1984), 279–80.
Faulkner, Christopher, ‘Affective Identities: French National Cinema and the 1930s’, in Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue canadienne d’études cinématographiques, 3: 2 (1994), 3–23.
Fofi, Goffredo, ‘The Cinema of the Popular Front in France (1934–1938)’, in Screen, 13 (Winter 1972–73) and John Ellis (ed.), Screen Reader 1: Cinema/Ideology/Politics (London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1977), pp. 172–224.
Gomery, Douglas, ‘Economic Struggle and Hollywood Imperialism: Europe Converts to Sound’, in Yale French Studies, 60 (1980), 90–93.
Hayward, Susan and Vincendeau, Ginette (eds), French Film: Texts and Contexts, second edn (London: Routledge, 2000).
Jeancolas, Jean-Pierre, Quinze ans d’années trente: le cinéma des Français 1929–1944 (Paris: Stock, 1983).
__________________, Histoire du cinéma français (Paris: Nathan, 1995).
Kracauer, Siegfried, ‘The Mass Ornament’, in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. and ed. Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 75–86.
Kuleshov, Lev, Kuleshov on Film: Writings of Lev Kuleshov, trans. and ed. Ronald Levaco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
Lagny, Michèle, Ropars, Marie-Claire and Sorlin, Pierre, Générique des années 30 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1986).
Mac Orlan, Pierre, ‘Le Fantastique’, in L’Art cinématographique, 1 (1926), 1–19.
_______________ ‘Graphismes’, in Dominique Baqué (ed.), Les Documents de la modernité: anthologie de textes sur la photographie de 1919 à 1939 (Nîmes: Jacqueline Chambon, 1993), pp. 39–41.
_______________, ‘Le Domaine du fantastique’, in L’Écran français, 21 (21 November 1945), p. 3.
McCann, Ben, Ripping Open the Set: French Film Design 1930–39 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013).
Ory, Pascal, La Belle Illusion: culture et politique sous le signe du Front Populaire (1994; Paris: CNRS éditions, 2016).
Phillips, Alastair, ‘Migration and Exile in the Classical Period’, in Temple, Michael (ed.), The French Cinema Book (London: BFI, 2004), pp. 103–17.
______________, City of Darkness, City of Light: Émigré Filmmakers in Paris 1929–1939 (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2004).
Prédal, René, La Société Française à travers le cinéma 1914–1945 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972).
Sadoul, Georges. Chroniques du cinéma: écrits 1, ed. Bernard Eisenschitz (Paris: UGE, 1979)
Temple, Michael (ed.), The French Cinema Book (London: BFI, 2004).
Valéry, Paul, ‘La Conquête de l’ubiquité’ (1934), dans Œuvres, 2 vols, ed. Jean Hytier (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), ii, 1284–87.
Vincendeau, Ginette, ‘Community, Nostalgia and the Spectacle of Masculinity’, in Screen, 26: 6 (1985), 18–38.
_________________, ‘Melodramatic Realism: On Some French Women’s Films in the 1930s’, in Screen, 30 (1989), 51–65.
_________________, ‘From the Bal populaire to the Casino: Class and Leisure in French Films of the 1930s’, in Nottingham French Studies, 31: 2 (1992), 52–70.
_________________, Stars and Stardom in French Cinema (London: Continuum, 2000).
Vincendeau, Ginette and Reader, Keith (eds), La Vie est à nous!: French Cinema of the Popular Front 1935-1938 (London: BFI, 1986).
Wood, Robin, Sexual Politics and Narrative Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).


Specific Movement and Director Bibliographies:

Surrealism
Hammond, Paul, L’Âge d’or (London: BFI, 1997).
_____________ (ed.), The Shadow and its Shadow: Surrealist Writings on the Cinema (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2000).
Kyrou, Ado, Le Surréalisme au cinéma (1952; Paris: Ramsay, 1985).
Matthews, J. H., Surrealism and Film (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971).
Murcia, Claude, Un chien andalou, L’Âge d’or: etude critique (Paris: Nathan, 1994).
Virmaux, Alain and Odette, Les Surrealistes au cinéma: anthologie (Paris: Seghers, 1976).
Williams, Linda, Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1981).

René Clair
Barrot, Olivier, René Clair ou le temps mesuré (Paris: Hatier, 1985).
Dale, R. C., The Films of René Clair, 2 vols (Metuchen, NJ & London: The Scarecrow Press, 1986).

Jean Vigo
Andrew, Dudley, ‘The Fever of an Infectious Film: L’Atalante and the Aesthetics of Spontaneity’, in Film in the Aura of Art (Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 59–77.
Bourgeois, Natalie et al., L’Atalante, un film de Jean Vigo (Paris: Cinémathèque française, 2000).
Salès Gomès, P. E., Jean Vigo (Paris; Ramsay, 1957).
Vigo, Luce, Jean Vigo, une vie engagée en dans le cinéma (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2002).
Warner, Marina, L’Atalante (London: BFI, 1993).
Wood, Robin, ‘The Couple and the Other’, in Sexual Politics and Narrative Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 31–59.

Jean Renoir
Bazin, André, Jean Renoir , ed. François Truffaut (Paris; Champ Libre, 1971).
___________, Jean Renoir, trans. W. W. Halsey II and William H. Simon (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1973).
Bush, Lyall, ‘Female Narrative and the Law in Renoir’s Le Crime de M. Lange’, in Cinema Journal, 29: 1 (1989), 54–70.
Faulkner, Christopher, The Social Cinema of Jean Renoir (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
__________________, ‘Paris, Arizona; or The Redemption of Difference: Jean Renoir’s Le Crime de Monsieur Lange’, in Hayward and Vincendeau (eds), French Film: Texts and Contexts, pp. 27–41.
O’Shaughnessy, Martin, Jean Renoir (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).
Perkins, V. F., La Règle du jeu (London: BFI, 2012).
Philips, Alastair and Vincendeau, Ginette (eds), A Companion to Jean Renoir (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
Reader, Keith, ‘The Circular Ruins? Frontiers, Exile and the Nation in Renoir’s Le Crime de M. Lange’, in French Studies, 54: 3 (2000), 287–97.
Reader, Keith, ‘Chaos, Contradiction and Order in Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu’, in Australian Journal of French Studies, 36: 1 (1999), 26–38.
Renoir, Jean, Écrits (1926–1971) (Paris: Belfond, 1974).
__________, Ma vie et mes films(Paris: Flammarion, 1974).
Wood, Robin, ‘Renoir and Mozart’, in Sexual Politics and Narrative Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 60–93.

Julien Duvivier
Bayles, Janette, ‘Gendered Configurations of Colonial and Metropolitan Space in Pépé le Moko’, in Australian Journal of French Studies, 36: 1 (1999), 39–57.
Morgan, Janice, ‘In the Labyrinth: Masculine Subjectivity, Expatriation and Colonialism in Pépé le Moko’, in Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar (eds), Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), pp. 253–68.
O’Brien, Charles, ‘The “Cinéma colonial” of 1930s France: Film Narration as Spatial Practice’, in Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar (eds), Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), pp. 207–31.
O’Shaughnessy, Martin, ‘Pépé le Moko or The Impossibility of Being French in the 1930s’, in French Cultural Studies, 7 (1996), 247–58.
Vincendeau, Ginette, Pépé le Moko (London: BFI, 1998).

Marcel Carné
Bazin, André, ‘Le Jour se lève et le réalisme poétique de Marcel Carné’, in Jacques Chevalier (ed.), Regards neufs sur le cinéma (Paris: Seuil, 1953), pp. 286–305.
Carné, Marcel, Marcel Carné: ciné-reporter (1929–1934), ed. by Philippe Morisson (Grandvilliers: La Tour verte, 2016).
Chazal, Robert, Marcel Carné (Paris: Seghers, 1965).
McCann, Ben, Le Jour se lève (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014).
Turim, Maureen, ‘Poetic Realism as Psychoanalytical and Ideological Operation: Marcel Carné’s Le Jour se lève’, in Hayward and Vincendeau (eds), French Film: Texts and Contexts, pp. 63–77.
Turk, Edward Baron, Child of Paradise: Marcel Carné and the Golden Age of French Cinema (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

Please note that this is a level-four/Masters/MA/postgraduate level module designed for students who have already successfully completed an undergraduate programme of study (typically BA).

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

Individual oral discussion of first assignment topic in advance, submission of essay in Week 7, followed by individual written feedback in advance of oral discussion of second assignment topic in last weeks of term.