Journal of Popular Film and Television

ISSN: 0195-6051 (Print) 1930-6458 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjpf20

FRENCH CINEMA AND THE GREAT WAR:

REMEMBRANCE AND REPRESENTATION Ed.
Marcelline Block and Barry Nevin. Rowman and
Littlefield, 2016. 180 pp. $85.00 hardcover

Colleen Kennedy-Karpat

To cite this article: Colleen Kennedy-Karpat (2018) FRENCH CINEMA AND THE GREAT WAR:
REMEMBRANCE AND REPRESENTATION Ed. Marcelline Block and Barry Nevin. Rowman and
Littlefield, 2016. 180 pp. $85.00 hardcover, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 46:2, 119-120,
DOI: 10.1080/01956051.2018.1486134

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Published online: 06 Sep 2018.

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 Book Reviews 119

Willmetts ends by dwelling on this mo- sis, and his larger arguments. Perhaps he Cinema, Defense and Subversion. Rout-
ment of high paranoia, wherein the Ameri- can append In Secrecy’s Shadow by writing ledge, 2011.
can public famously shook its tacit approval a sequel. Since its decade of silence in the
of its ruling institutions. In some ways, the 1950s, the CIA has become something of an Kevin Flanagan is a visiting lecturer in
decision to end in the 1970s feels arbitrary, endless wellspring for stories. In Secrecy’s film studies and English at the University
and is probably the book’s biggest flaw. Shadow is a specialist monograph, but chap- of Pittsburgh. His main research interests
While there are occasional allusions to the ters from it might be suitable for undergradu- include British film and television, arts
CIA’s role in films of later decades (the ate courses of war and cinema or US history documentary, adaptation studies, genre, and
Bourne franchise is obviously emblematic), through film. media history. He is the author of Ken Rus-
future factors like the rise of the surveillance Kevin M. Flanagan sell: Re-Viewing England’s Last Mannerist
state and the predominance of terrorism as (Scarecrow Press, 2009) and has published
University of Pittsburgh
the key arbiter of national security have articles in Journal of British Cinema and
WORK CITED Television, Framework, Critical Quarterly,
helped nuance the CIA’s function as a nec-
South Atlantic Review, and Adaptation.
essary evil. Willmetts is a fine writer who Boyd-Barrett, Oliver, David Herrera, and
deftly blends archival work, textual analy- Jim Baumann. Hollywood and the CIA:

FRENCH CINEMA AND THE GREAT de coeur (Dir. Philippe de Broca, 1966) in as celluloid prisms, refracting the sharp laser
WAR: REMEMBRANCE AND a thoughtful discussion of collective iden- light of combat into a fuller spectrum of hu-
REPRESENTATION tity and the film’s place among other French man hardship experienced both during and
Ed. Marcelline Block and Barry Nevin. films released the same year that treat his- after wartime.
Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. 180 pp. Some contributors make this broadened
tory and morality: respectively, Masculin,
$85.00 hardcover
féminin (Dir. Jean-Luc Godard) and Au perspective their explicit goal. Henri-Simon
Hasard Balthazar (Dir. Robert Bresson). Blanc-Hoàng’s chapter examines three films

T
he centennial of World War I has Turning to the women who lived through the that “[impart] an increased awareness of the
turned a great deal of scholarly at- war, Karen A. Ritzenhoff focuses on gender futility of war, especially where disenfran-
tention to reframing that epochal dynamics and memory in Un Long diman- chised groups such as the colonial troops,
moment in history. In French Cin- che de fiançailles (Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, women, and the working classes become its
ema and the Great War, editors Marcelline 2004), foregrounding women’s crucial role innocent casualties” (36). Marcelline Block
Block and Barry Nevin propose to examine in the post-combat reckoning and the long- compares the way love stories are articulated
cinematic representations of the conflict and term commemoration of war. Extending this both in the trenches, in Joyeux Noël (Dir.
its contexts, assembling a collection that discussion of gender into the final section Christian Carion, 2005), and after the armi-
studies notable films released during the de- dedicated to Renoir, Julie M. Powell exam- stice in La Vie et rien d’autre (Dir. Bertrand
cades between the outbreak of the war and ines disability and masculinity in La Grande Tavernier, 1989). Such willingness to exam-
the earliest years of the twenty-first century. illusion, a fresh and insightful perspective on ine representation that considers the war’s
Indeed, cinema itself has aged nearly along- a film more frequently viewed through the myriad repercussions across time and among
side the memory of this war, and the editors lens of class conflict and the decline of the diverse populations is a welcome contribu-
acknowledge “the power of film to supplant European aristocracy (as other contributors tion to the new wave of WWI studies.
contemporary, empirically rooted historical to this volume have done). In another new In other ways, however, the collection
knowledge” (xv). angle on a well-commented classic, William suffers from the repeated treatment of the
The close readings here are strong, and on Kidd astutely compares selected features of same selected texts, sacrificing breadth of
the whole the writing is lively and concise, La Grande illusion to sculptural memorials primary material for analyses that do not
with chapters divided into three sections: erected in France to honor the casualties of always introduce singular ideas or a clear
Recording and Remembering the Great War; the Great War. contrast with their companion chapters. To
Women at the Front; and a third section de- As this list may already suggest, the articulate this critique more precisely, how
voted expressly to Jean Renoir’s La Grande textual purview of French Cinema and much reconsideration did Jean Renoir actu-
illusion (1937). A few chapters offer insights the Great War feels rather constrained; the ally need within this thematic framework?
worth highlighting here. In the book’s first book’s eleven chapters discuss just thirteen Likewise, the book’s double takes on Le
section, Maryann De Julio’s discussion of films in total, with only three of these—Le Roi de coeur and Un Long dimanche de fi-
Germaine Dulac’s Le Cinéma au service de Roi de coeur, Un Long dimanche de fian- ançailles might have been better redirected
l’histoire (1935)—“neither a newsreel nor a çailles, and the incontrovertible classic La toward other, equally worthy films.
documentary, but rather a montage of found Grande illusion, which claims a four-chapter Methodologically, too, French Cinema
material” (3)—integrates a perceptive analy- section unto itself—appearing in no fewer and the Great War would have benefitted
sis of the film’s style and substance with a than eight chapters. Yet the most curious and from a more forceful application of what
succinct presentation of Dulac as a pioneer- ultimately illuminating feature of this nar- Richard Maltby, Daniël Biltereyst, and
ing filmmaker. Phillip John Usher anchors row filmography is how most of these films Philippe Meers have dubbed New Cinema
his analysis of the pacifist comedy Le Roi downplay the front lines of battle as a locus History, that is, sociological approaches that
of cinematic representation. Indeed, this col- explore audiences, exhibition practices, in-
Copyright © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC lection’s clearest strength lies in its assertion dustry structures, and other areas beyond the
DOI: 10.1080/01956051.2018.1486134 that films about the Great War often serve films themselves. Several chapters do draw
120 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television

on larger social contexts (De Julio, Kidd, the scope of this book without disrupting the Modernity: Perspectives on European
Powell, Usher, Clémentine Tholas-Disset on volume’s thematic organization. Very little Cinema History. Routledge, 2012.
the framing of the WWI-era heroine in silent of either scholar’s important work on WWI Maltby, Richard, Daniel Biltereyst, and
cinema), but the overarching textual focus of cinema has been translated into English, a Philippe Meers. Explorations in New Cin-
the collection ends up sidelining these other, ema History: Approaches and Case Stud-
void that might have been productively filled
ies. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
equally important aspects of film studies. A here. Puget, Clément. “Verdun … de Léon Po-
dose of adaptation studies would also have What remains compelling in this volume, irier.” 1895, vol. 45, April 2005, pp. 5–29.
bolstered several discussions, especially Fer- despite these shortcomings, is its focused at-
nando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns’s discussion of tention on cinematic representations of a war ORCID
Thomas l’imposteur (Dir. Georges Franju, that took place at the dawn of the same cen- Colleen Kennedy-Karpat
1965), which never mentions Jean Cocteau’s tury that saw the rapid evolution of cinema
1923 novel despite its evident status as the
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3915-6478
itself. The meaning and resonance of both
film’s source text; an overt comparison of of these historic developments inevitably
source to film might have productively com- change over time, and with these collected Colleen Kennedy-Karpat is an assistant
plicated Pagnoni Berns’s assertion that the essays, Block and Nevin chart a range of professor in the Department of Commu-
latter’s portrayal of war as “a spectacle of cinematic genres and styles that have been nication and Design at Bilkent University.
appearances” is somehow unique to its time put in the service of telling and retelling the She is the author of Rogues, Romance, and
(20). stories of this war to a century’s worth of Exoticism in French Cinema of the 1930s
Given the collection’s relatively short (Fairleigh Dickinson UP/Rowman & Little-
audiences.
length, it is also surprising not to see one field, 2013) and co-editor, with Eric Sand-
or two translated essays from prominent Colleen Kennedy-Karpat berg, of Adaptation, Awards Culture, and
Bilkent University the Value of Prestige (Palgrave Macmillan,
French scholars such as Laurent Véray—
2017). She studies stars, directors, media
who did contribute a brief foreword to the adaptations, and cinema history in France
volume—or Clément Puget, whose essay on WORKS CITED and elsewhere.
Léon Poirier’s Verdun project (1928/1931), Biltereyst, Daniel, Richard Maltby, and
for instance, would have usefully expanded Philippe Meers. Cinema, Audiences and

THE WESTERNS AND WAR FILMS OF cally connected, and most of Ford’s Westerns the volume’s focus. Also, not every film in
JOHN FORD. have a military component, construed in var- the category is contemplated—Wagon Mas-
By Sue Matheson. Rowman & Littlefield, ious ways. That “military” aspect, more ap- ter (1950) is absent, for example. Even so,
2016. 339 pp. $42.00 cloth. propriately “military culture,” is essentially details and connections make the scope mas-
what is under consideration and scrutiny in sive, with at least two dozen films covered in

O
f the classic Hollywood studio-era this volume. The author uses the concepts his nearly five-decade career as a director of
directors, none have been scruti- of “combat culture” and “veteran’s films” motion pictures.
nized more repeatedly and more (and variations on those terms) throughout Fans and scholars of Ford and his films
obsessively than Alfred Hitchcock, the book to delve into this area of Ford’s will quickly note that the book draws as-
Orson Welles, and John Ford. All three have work. The impact of military culture on the tutely on the now canonical texts about Ford
had the most seemingly insignificant details culture of the United States at large is not ad- and his career. But most interestingly how-
of their biographical information, psycho- dressed directly but is evident in points made ever, original research has been done in ar-
logical makeups, and filmic output forced in the later chapters. Interestingly, it is not chives holding Ford’s papers and through in-
under every conceivable lens of analysis all of Ford’s war films that are considered, terviews with his fabled “stock company” of
and probing. Each bit of minutia has been but rather only those war films pertaining di- actors and technicians who worked for/with
endlessly amplified, and each mountain has rectly to the United States. For example, Wee him on a repeating basis from production to
been mined into a molehill. The mosaics of Willie Winkie (1937), concerned with a Brit- production. These sources are seamlessly
their lives, art, and careers have been repeat- ish military outpost in India and considered cited approximately 825 times throughout
edly sifted, shuffled, and appraised, reap- by some to be a “Western in disguise” is not the text. The index is a cut above the com-
praised, and appraised yet again. even mentioned in passing. The distinction monplace, providing useful subheadings on
It comes as a bit of a shock, then, how could have been more overtly stated, but this major topics (such as Ford himself) and a
fresh and original this new volume on the is a quibble as it becomes clear enough early few key thematic entries (such as “commu-
key corpus of John Ford’s work truly is. enough. nal manhood”) and some welcome cross list-
Ford’s prodigious output can be sliced and Limiting Ford’s output to his Westerns ings. Sixteen black and white photographs,
diced in any number of ways to make it and war films admittedly limits the number one per page, appear at the center of the
handleable in a single volume. Several have of his works under consideration but does book, largely showing either a scene from
made the most obvious choice of focusing not limit the constructs of his cultural dis- one of his films or Ford at work on set or in
on Ford’s most notable genre of work, his courses or artistic themes. The fact that most uniform.
Westerns. The unique aspect here is that this of Ford’s silent-era output (heavy on West- The relatively unique spin on the military
collection reasonably enough adds in his war erns) is no longer extant helps narrow the culture of Ford’s films coupled with the orig-
films. Reasonably, because they are themati- coverage a bit, and so does the author’s em- inal research make the book notable from the
phasis on the Westerns made after Ford’s ex- outset. Added to these aspects are the under-
Copyright © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC periences in and films made during the Sec- lying ideas that bring focus and perspective
DOI: 10.1080/01956051.2018.1486135 ond World War, perfectly reasonable given to the discussions and analyses of the films