Auteur meets genre: Rohmer and the rom-com

Eric Rohmer’s influence on filmic chroniclers of love within the auteur canon is widely recognized. This essay seeks to situate his oeuvre within a different cinematic historiography: that of genre cinema in general and romantic comedy specifically. In so doing it answers Celestino Deleyto’s call for a reappraisal of films usually seen as outside mainstream genericity from this perspective.1 Given that genre is a site of exchange between filmic institutions and audiences, both of which—even in the case of the more specialized audience targeted by Rohmer—interact with culture more broadly, the point of such an approach is to examine the role played by Rohmer’s work in mediating historically and locally specific notions about coupling and romance. In other words, this analysis will reinsert into a particular social context films that have most frequently been understood to exist as “pure cinema,” outside histor

Recasting the heroic resistance ideal: Robert Bresson's condamne a mort sest echappe

This article argues that a re-reading of Un condamné à mort s’est échappé (1956), directed by Robert Bresson, is timely because of its sophisticated insight into the nature of resistance, how it came about, and how it was sustained in daily life. Much Bresson criticism focuses almost exclusively on the visual quality of his films and the timelessness of his themes. Many have suggested this film’s wartime setting is a mere backdrop for the playing out of a drama that transcends its historical location. Others simplistically describe it as the near perfect articulation of the ‘Gaullist myth of resistance’. Un condamné à mort s’est échappé is relevant to the ongoing debates about resistance in France because it redefines the heroic resistance ideal and because of its emphasis on process rather than outcomes. It speaks to a new generation of historians aiming to supplant the unsustainable and misplaced epic representation of resistance with one that is more in keeping with the lived experience of resisters and the everyday decisions that rooted them in their local communities. More than solidarity, the film depicts the complementarity of the roles of the protagonists and calls into question the false dichotomy between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ resistance.Vesna Drapa

The French film industry's current financial crisis and its impact on creation: the example of Jacques Doillon's Raja (2003)

Although Jacques Doillon is amongst the major film-makers in France, his recent project found no financing in spite of its relative cheapness. According to Doillon, this was because his scenario did not fit within the light-entertainment focus of financiers. Indeed, funding films that do not conform to a Hollywood model has become a particularly fraught issue in France. Frustrated in his original ambition, Doillon then embarked on the filming of Raja in Marrakech (Morocco). This film depicts the unsuccessful love story between a blasé, middle-aged Frenchman (Pascal Greggory) and Raja, one of his maids played by the newcomer Najat Benssallem. One of the first temptations is to read the film as a parable for the power relationship between rich industrialized countries in the North and emerging nations in the South. Our article however proposes a different interpretation of the narrative: in our view, the film can also be seen as an allegory for the conflict-ridden relationship between film-makers and their financiers in a world where return upon investment is the paramount criterion for the selection of scenarios