Landscapes of Loss: The National Past in Postwar French Cinema

Abstract

This ambitious work, written in a lucid prose, sets out to show how French films after World War II depict a postwar malaise concerning France's national identity, through the portrayal of key moments from its past. Greene sees France's "obsession" with history over the last half century as actually an emphasis on memory over history, on fiction over fact. According to Greene, this turn away from "concrete realities" (frequently the most horrible) in favor of mythification reveals France's attempts to safeguard a sense of national identity and is primarily present in the cinema made by filmmakers of the political Right. On the other hand, the New Left (and its gauchiste cinema) "ushered in by the student rebellion of 1968" (9), resists, according to Greene, this inclination to occlude the facts and is more apt to present critical commentaries about the national past than to extol it. Greene's presentation is always careful not to assume a prior knowledge of the issues she approaches, so that a general public, as well as specialists, will find this book accessible and useful. Landscapes of Loss contains a wealth of sources and references on French cinema and is also impressive in its treatment of critical sources on recent French history. Unfortunately, however, there is no bibliography, so it is sometimes difficult to locate references that are buried in the numerous endnotes.