Book description
Offering portraits of such key figures as the Lumière brothers,
Georges Méliès, Charles Pathé and Léon Gaumont, he looks at the early
pioneers who transformed a fairground novelty into a global industry.
The crisis caused by the First World War led France to surrender her
position as the world's dominant film-making power, but French cinema
forged a new role for itself as a beacon of cinematic possibility and
achievement. Producing such distinctive film-makers as Jean Renoir,
Marcel Pagnol, Sachy Guitry and Julien Duvivier, the French cinema's
Golden Age boasted an intelligence, maturity and flair that classical
Hollywood could admire but struggle to emulate. Suggesting a Gallic
attitude that has always considered the cinema to be as much a cause
as a business, Drazin looks at the extraordinary resilience of the
French film industry during the Second World War when, in spite of the
national catastrophe of defeat and occupation, it was still able to
produce such classics as Le Corbeau and Les Enfants du Paradis.
Finally, he traces its remarkable post-war regeneration. He looks at
the seminal impact of the New Wave of film-makers - typified by
Truffaut and Godard - but also at the other waves that have followed
since. As he brings the story up-to-date - with Jacques Audaird's
award-winning A Prophet - he seeks to capture the essence of the
French film tradition and why it continues to matter to anyone who
cares about the cinema.
Charles Drazin is a biographer and film historian who lectures
on cinema at Queen Mary University of London. His previous books
include In Search of The Third Man, Korda: Britain's Only Movie Mogul
and The Man Who Outshone the Sun King. He is also the editor of two
volumes of journals of the novelist John Fowles.
