Theory and practice of film reviewing in France in the 1930s: eyes right (Lucien Rebatet and Action Francaise 1936-1939

Faulkner, Christopher

doi:10.1177/095715589200300802

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“…In Rebatet's writing, 'the word "Jew" is not merely a serviceable epithet of scorn or abuse; it is the oating signi er of Otherness which formulates the division between the same and different, inside and outside, French and non-French'. 23 It is fascinating that right-wing critics such as Rebatet then went on to link the perceived ill-effects of Judeo-Germanism with the lmic depictions of the realities of city life such as Dans les rues which began to proliferate in the 1930s. Rebatet Jewishness became linked to the negative associations of taking the camera down the dark streets of Paris.…”

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The camera goes down the streets. Dans les rues (Victor Trivas, 1933) and the Paris of the German émigrés

Phillips

2000

Modern & Contemporary France

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Marcel Carné's important clarion call to 1930s French cinema 'to take the camera down the streets' was uniquely troubled by the arrival of waves of German émigré lmmakers in the French capital. This article uses one émigré lm set in Paris, Dans les rues (Victor Trivas, 1933), as a case study to discuss both the place of the city and the place of the outsider in cinematic cultural representatio n during this decade. It argues that despite right-wing critical discourse linking Jewish culture with the ill effects of city life, a lm like Dans les rues can be seen as an important turning point in the on-screen depiction of Paris. Trivas's lm may have looked backwards to 19th-century convention, but, at the same time, it responded uniquely to Carné's concerns to produce an important, though largely neglected, early example of poetic realism.The Parisian cinema auditorium of the 1930s was a place that city-dwellers largely entered at night, attracted by the display lights of the cinema building. Off the street, the audience found themselves in darkness again for the duration of the evening's main entertainment whilst images of the city were projected in light. Traditions of Parisian representation similarly rely on a historically located continuity between light and its inevitable consequence-shadow. Discussing the work of É mile Zola and the historical depiction of social experience in the French capital, Louis Chevalier has written that 'paradoxically […] the triumph of light, for him, far from eradicated the shadow and the past which it concealed. It actually accorded it a new form of life as if light was a dazzling container for shadow.' 1 Here I will attempt to make sense of this heritage in relation to the contribution that a set of émigré lmmakers from Germany made to the lmic interpretation of the capital which was for them, also, temporarily, a beacon of light. Using the example of Victor Trivas's city lm, Dans les rues (1933) 2 , I shall examine the complex intersection between the émigrés' cinematic depiction 0963-948 9 print/1469-9869 online/00/030325-10 Ó 2000 ASM&CF

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The camera goes down the streets. Dans les rues (Victor Trivas, 1933) and the Paris of the German émigrés

Phillips

2000

Modern & Contemporary France

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“…For the Right, the Jewish film émigrés, amongst others, represented an unwarranted threat to a pure and homogenous version of nationhood, whilst for some Leftist elements they could stand as a symbol of organised capitalism. Faulkner (1992) has even gone as far as arguing that the Parti Communiste Français's (PCF) scornful but nationalistically motivated rhetoric of the "two hundred families" during the period of the Popular Front actively contributed to the eventual success of the right-wing argument. The "two hundred families" were the unjustly favoured ruling elite of the nation whose interests were naturally hostile to the programme of Léon Blum's short-lived Popular Front reform government which came to power after the elections of April-May 1936.…”

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City of Darkness, City of Light : Emigré Filmmakers in Paris 1929-1939

Phillips¹

2003

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Une histoire oubliée : la genèse française du terme « film noir » dans les années 1930 et ses implications transnationales

Pillard¹

2012

transatlantica

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Theory and practice of film reviewing in France in the 1930s: eyes right (Lucien Rebatet and Action Francaise 1936-1939

Cited by 3 publications

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The camera goes down the streets. Dans les rues (Victor Trivas, 1933) and the Paris of the German émigrés

The camera goes down the streets. Dans les rues (Victor Trivas, 1933) and the Paris of the German émigrés

City of Darkness, City of Light : Emigré Filmmakers in Paris 1929-1939

Une histoire oubliée : la genèse française du terme « film noir » dans les années 1930 et ses implications transnationales

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