Books in the French Film Directors Series series

The first full-length monograph in English about one of France's most important contemporary filmmakers, locating Andre Techine within historical and cultural contexts that include the Algerian war, contemporary globialisation, and the influence of Roland Barthes, Bertolt Brecht, Ingmar Bergman, William Faulkner and the cinematic French wave.

Dobson provides detailed critical analysis of films by Dominique Cabrera, Laetitia Masson, Noemie Lvovsky and Marion Vernoux, and presents common threads including the possible construction of social intimacy, the political demystification of romance narratives and the role of nostalgia in contemporary French cinema. -- .

Described by Deleuze as 'one of the greatest modern auteurs', Philippe Garrel is perhaps the most significant filmmaker to emerge in France after the New Wave. This study offers an overview of his work, exploring its intersections with avant-gardes including the Situationists, Surrealism, Arte Povera and the American Underground. -- .

This volume offers a new interpretation of the whole of Godard's career in cinema. Drawing examples from all periods of Godard's filmmaking, it examines the parallels between the director's innovative approach to film form and wider developments in French culture and thought since 1950. -- .

This study of Duras cinema, examines such films as "India Song", "Le Camion", and "Nathalie Granger". It provides an introduction to her films, and locates them in their autobiographical as well as social and historical context, with an empahasis on gender issues.

Luc Besson is considered one of the hottest international properties to emerge from the new wave of French film directors in the 1980s. This is a study of Besson's film-making career to date, placing the films within their socio-historical and political context.

After making an initial impact with his first film "Les 400 Coups", the French film director Francois Truffaut went on to make 23 films in 26 years. This appraisal of his work provides a socio-political contextualization, and gives an overview of his films and film-making methods.

This is the first book on the celebrated films of director Claire Denis ('Chocolat', 'Beau Travail', 'Trouble Every Day'), one of the most remarkable filmmakers to come to prominence in the last 20 years. An essential read for students and specialists in contemporary French cinema. -- .

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 times difficult career. He was adept at literary adaptation, biblical epic, and film noir, and this groundbreaking volume illustrates in great detail Duvivier's eclecticism, technical efficiency and visual fluency in works such as Panique (1946) and Voici le temps des assassins (1956). It will particularly appeal to scholars and students of French cinema looking for examples of a director who could straddle the realms of the popular and the auteur.

A study of Georges Melies, who directed, edited, produced, designed and starred in over 500 films between 1896 and 1912. Elizabeth Ezra explodes several myths about Melies's role in film history and locates the roots of modern narrative cinema in Melies's work.

An illuminating new introduction to Alain Resnais's work, extending from his earliest documentaries to the musical films of the last decade Traces the evolving patterns of Resnais's filmmaking, and its changing reflections on mortality, guilt, chance and human doubt Sets Resnais's films in the context of important current debates in film.

An introduction to the work of Robert Bresson, a respected and acclaimed director in the history of cinema. His films are considered in chronological order, using a perspective that draws variously on spectator theory, Catholic mysticism, gender theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis.

The first full-length monograph in English devoted to one of the most acclaimed and controversial directors in contemporary cinema -- .

This volume in the French Film Directors series has been long-awaited by students and academics of French and European cinema in particular and by Film Studies students in general. -- .

First and only comprehensive overview of Pagnol's career in English, and the only book in any language to link Pagnol's early career as a playwright with his controversial theories of cinema and his work as a film director. -- .

Most comprehensive and up-to-date study of Tavernier's oeuvre. In-depth discussion of every major film through 2010. First to examine Tavernier's work through the lens of genre. -- .

The first book-length study of Cantet's work in English. It explores his unique working 'method,' and discusses his very particular way of constructing films at the uneasy interface of the individual, the group and the broader social context.

Placing Robbe-Grillet's filmic oeuvre in the related contexts of both his novelistic work and the different historical and cultural periods in which his films were made, the book traces lines of influence and continuity throughout this oeuvre which is shown to exhibit a preoccupation with an identifiable body of themes, motifs and structures.

This new book on internationally acclaimed film director Chantal Akerman provides an illuminating overview of her filmmaking to date and an in-depth analysis of her multi-faceted film style. -- .

The fullest study of Georges Franju to date, and the first book on him in English since 1967 -- .

Film historian Michael Temple explores the intense career of Jean Vigo, one of the legendary figures of world cinema, and asks why he has had such a long-lasting impact on film culture around the world. -- .

This is the first study of the films of Francois Ozon, and places the precocious French auteur in a lucid critical framework, highlighting Ozon's importance for a thoroughly postmodern film-going generation. -- .

The first full-length book devoted to Jacques Demy in the English language. -- .

Despite his controversial reputation and international notoriety as a film-maker, no full-length study of Clouzot has ever been published in English. This book offers a significant revaluation of Clouzot's achievement, situating his life and work in the wider context of French cinema and society, and providing detailed analysis of his major films.

A comprehensive, original and accessible account of all aspects of Jean Cocteau's work in the cinema. The first major study in English for over forty years. Casts new light on Cocteau's most celebrated films as well as the lesser known ones. -- .

Chris Marker's importance has been recognized by critics from his earliest films onwards. Marker explores the relation between fact and fiction in memory as in documentary, in words and in images that work both with and against one another. This title presents an overview of the filmmaker.

A complete survey - the first in English - of Jacques Rivette's sixty-year career in French cinema, from the New Wave to the present day. -- .

This comprehensive study of Eric Rohmer generously surveys the director's five-decade career, exploring questions of production, cinematic realism, style and technique, serial filmmaking, and historical adaptation. -- .