Landscapes of Loss: The National Past in Postwar French Cinema

Abstract

This text puts a different perspective on the variety of post-war French films by exploring the obsession with the national past that has characterized French cinema since the late 1960s, observing that the sense of grandeur and destiny that once shaped French identity has eroded.The author examines the ways in which French cinema has represented traumatic and defining moments of the nation's past, such as the political battles of the 1930s, the Vichy era, decolonization, and the collapse of ideologies.The repressed memories and smothered unease that characterize the cinema of Alan Resnais are seen as a kind of prelude to a fierce battle for national memory that marked so-called reto films of the 1970s and 1980s. The shifting political and historical perspectives toward the nation's more distant past are explored in the light of the films of Bertrand Tavernier.Finally, the text explores the mood of nostalgia and melancholy that appaers to haunt contemporary France, in the light of the golden age and imperial past.