DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The French Screen Goddess

Film Stardom and the Modern Woman in 1930s France

Jonathan Driskell author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:26th Mar '15

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The French Screen Goddess cover

Long before Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve, the French cinema produced a host of glamorous female stars designed to rival their Hollywood counterparts. This book examines how these stars influenced the narratives and look of their films.

Many years before Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve rose to fame, the French cinema produced a host of glamorous female stars designed to rival their Hollywood counterparts. Bathed in soft light, discussed adoringly in fan magazines and shown wearing the latest fashions, these 'cinematic stars' emerged in opposition to France's traditional stage-based stardom, while remaining, through the roles they played and the looks they sported, a distinctly French phenomenon. The French Screen Goddess examines how these stars influenced the narratives and look of their films, contributed to defining the period's new, emancipated femininity -, the 'modern woman' -, and related to the decade's politics, particularly the Popular Front of the mid-1930s. The book focuses on the three most important examples of this type of stardom, Annabella, Danielle Darrieux and Michele Morgan, while also considering many other key stars, such as Arletty, Viviane Romance and Jean Gabin. Previously neglected films are considered and true classics of French cinema re-examined, with Rene Clair's Quatorze juillet, Julien Duvivier's La Bandera, and Marcel Carne's Le Quai des brumes and Hotel du Nord foremost among these.

ISBN: 9781780767000

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 541g

256 pages