Exploring the multiple aesthetic and cultural links between French and Japanese cinema, The Cinematic Influence is packed with vivid examples and case studies of films by Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Godard, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Claire Denis, Naomi Kawase, Michel Gondry and many others. It illustrates the vast array of cinematic connections that mark a long history of mutual influence and reverence between filmmakers in France and Japan.The book provides new insights into the wa...

Le Jour se leve (1939) directed by Marcel Carne, is widely recognised as the classic French Poetic Realist film. Told in flashback, it recounts the story of a man who has committed a murder, and who awaits his fate as the police close in. Carne shuttles between different registers, tones and textures throughout, marshalling the studio's resources to create striking pictorial compositions. The film also contains the great French star Jean Gabin's most iconic performance as Francois, maroone...

This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world's great filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his films that identify his key themes and techniques, trace patterns of continuity and change, and explore critical assessments of his work over time.His career began in the silent era and ended as the French New Wave was winding down. In between, Duvivier made over sixty films in a long and at...

This book provides an in-depth analysis of what it means to be the first in family at university. It examines the factors that influence first in family students' decisions to enrol, attend and continue at university, and how their hopes, dreams and ambitions for the future affect their university experience. Using survey data and semi-structured interviews, the book offers valuable and far-reaching insights into the first in family student experience, and provides recommendations for futu...

Part romantic comedy, part sitcom, part social drama, L’Auberge espagnole (The Spanish Apartment) recounts a familiar ‘youth’ ritual – the move from university to ‘the real world’, the often complicated personal, romantic and cultural encounters that ensue, and the moral uncertainties that characterize that key biological and physiological developmental stage between adolescence and adulthood. French director Cédric Klapisch showcases the extraordinary colour and beauty o...

Michael Haneke is one of the most important directors working in Europe today, with films such as Funny Games (1997), Code Unknown (2000), and Hidden (2005) interrogating modern ethical dilemmas with forensic clarity and merciless insight. Haneke's films frequently implicate both the protagonists and the audience in the making of their misfortunes, yet even in the barren nihilism of The Seventh Continent (1989) and Time of the Wolf (2003) a dark...

"Le Fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain" was the surprise boxoffice success of 2001, with nine million spectators in France, and more than 30 million worldwide. The film turned Audrey Tautou into an international star, in her iconic role as Amelie, a naive French Parisian who devotes herself to mending the lives of the people around her. Shot on location in Paris, the film combines poetic and magical realism with stylish cinematography, original use of colour, state-of-the-art special effects...

Agnès Varda, a pioneer of the French New Wave, has been making radical films for over half a century. Many of these are considered by scholars, filmmakers, and audiences alike, as audacious, seminal, and unforgettable. This volume considers her production as a whole, revisiting overlooked films like Mur, Murs/Documenteur (1980–81), and connecting her cinema to recent installation work. This study demonstrates how Varda has resisted norms of representation and diktats of production...

Brutal Intimacy is the first book to explore the fascinating films of contemporary France, ranging from mainstream genre spectaculars to arthouse experiments, and from wildly popular hits to films that deliberately alienate the viewer. Twenty-first-century France is a major source of international cinema—diverse and dynamic, embattled yet prosperous—a national cinema offering something for everyone. Tim Palmer investigates France's growing population of women filmmakers, its buoyant vangua...

'We’ll always have Paris,' Humphrey Bogart assures Ingrid Bergman in the oft-quoted farewell scene from Casablanca in which Bogart’s character, hard-hearted restaurateur Rick Blaine, bids former lover Ilsa Lund goodbye. The backdrop against which they first fell in love, Paris later serves as a reminder of their deep mutual longings. And with a host of different realisations by filmmakers from Philip Kaufman to Julien Leclercq to Woody Allen, there is no question that Paris has li...

Award-winning author David L. Pike offers a unique focus on the crucial quarter-century in Canadian filmmaking when the industry became a viable force on the international stage. Pike provides a lively, personal, and accessible history of the most influential filmmakers and movements of both Anglo-Canadian and Quebecois cinema, from popular movies to art film and everything in between.Along with in-depth studies of key directors, including David Cronenberg, Patricia Rozema and Deny...

Will Higbee is a senior lecturer in film studies and co-director of the Centre for Research in Film Studies at University of Exeter. He is the author of Matthieu Kassovitz.Sarah Leahy is a senior lecturer in French and film at Newcastle University. She is the author of Casque d'or.Will Higbee and Sarah Leahy are associate editors of Studies in French Cinema.