Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts

by Marion Schmid

Overview

Casting fresh light on one of the most important movements in film history, Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts is the first comprehensive study of the New Wave’s relationship with the older arts. Traversing the fields of literature, theatre, painting, architecture and photography, and drawing on André Bazin alongside recent theories of intermediality, it investigates the ‘impure’, intermedial aesthetics of New Wave cinema. Filmmakers under discussion include critics—turned—directors François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jean—Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, members of the Left Bank Group Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Chris Marker, but also lesser—known directors, notably the ‘secret child of the New Wave’, Guy Gilles. This wide—ranging book offers an original reading of the complex, often ambivalent ways in which the New Wave engages the other arts in both its discursive construction and filmic practice.
Key Features:
A wide—ranging study which explores the complex, often ambiguous ways in which the New Wave engages with the other arts in both its discursive construction and cinematic practice
Affords a new prism for understanding New Wave filmmaking and its legacy through comprehensive analysis of the ways in which the New Wave aesthetic was shaped through intermedial dialogue and medium rivalry
Reassesses one of the most acclaimed movements in film history drawing on cutting—edge theory in the prominent field of intermediality studies
Offers an inclusive, heterogeneous view of the New Wave through inclusion of lesser—known directors such as Guy Gilles, Jean—Daniel Pollet and Jacques Demy alongside renowned Nouvelle Vague filmmakers

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474481373
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/16/2021
Series:	Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Marion Schmid is Professor of French Literature and Film at the University of Edinburgh. Her publications on film include Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts (2019), Chantal Akerman (2010), and Proust at the Movies (2005, with Martine Beugnet).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Celluloid and Paper: Rivalries, Synergies, Crossovers

Chapter 2: The World as Spectacle: Cinematic Theatricalities

Chapter 3: Painterly Hybridisations

Chapter 4: Architecture of Apocalypse, City of Lights

Chapter 5: Still/Moving: Photography and Cinematic Ontology

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Marion Schmid challenges familiar paradigms and provides a dazzling account of New Wave cinema’s engagement with a broad spectrum of culture—literature, theatre, painting, architecture, and photography. Her insightful re-readings of New Wave films and period criticism, deftly combined with contemporary concepts of intermediality, enable us to view this corpus afresh.

Professor Rebecca DeRoo

Marion Schmid challenges familiar paradigms and provides a dazzling account of New Wave cinema’s engagement with a broad spectrum of culture—literature, theatre, painting, architecture, and photography. Her insightful re-readings of New Wave films and period criticism, deftly combined with contemporary concepts of intermediality, enable us to view this corpus afresh.

Editorial Reviews

Marion Schmid challenges familiar paradigms and provides a dazzling account of New Wave cinema’s engagement with a broad spectrum of culture—literature, theatre, painting, architecture, and photography. Her insightful re—readings of New Wave films and period criticism, deftly combined with contemporary concepts of intermediality, enable us to view this corpus afresh.

Professor Rebecca DeRoo

[...] Schmid’s book provides a new angle of inquiry for analyzing New Wave films, and the strength of the book lies in its analysis of a large and diverse body of cinematic works as well as a review of existing scholarship. [It] offers a clear and comprehensive analysis of the ways in which New Wave directors built their revolutionary cinema through engagement with other revolutionary artists in media ranging from theater to architecture.

H—France Review Vol. 21, No. 16 - Dayna Oscherwitz

Schmid’s impressive grasp of the aesthetic history and theory of these different arts lends a persuasive authority to this account. The wide—ranging case studies and the overall argument will be familiar to seasoned scholars of the New Wave, but the book will be highly valuable to students and teachers grappling with these films, and this period, for the first time.

Modern & Contemporary France - Douglas Morrey

Schmid’s work is important not only because it offers a fresh approach to the study of New Wave films through an intermedial framework, but it also significantly adds to the debate of medium specificity in cinema. [...] Another aspect worth noting is that Schmid’s intermedial analysis expands itself into multiple media, and Intermedial Dialogues is a significant work for anyone who is not only interested in the history of the French New Wave, but also to those who are invested in exploring cinema’s relationship with the other arts.

Studies in European Cinema, 2020 - Philip VG Bijoy