Reviewing quality cinema: French costume drama of the 1950s

Abstract

If the study of 1950s French cinema as a whole has been fairly limited so far, a major part of the cause is the legacy of the 1950s critics of the Cahiers du cinéma (especially Truffaut) whose labelling of this cinema as ‘a cinema of quality’ or ‘daddy's cinema’ cast it into some kind of abyss from which it is only just beginning to emerge, thanks to studies by a few scholars who contest this simplified reductionism of a whole generation of cinematic production. But, to date, the focus has been more on auteurs and stars, on the one hand, and, on the other, the thriller genre and social-realist cinema, rather than on the costume drama. Furthermore, the Cahiers' dismissive rhetoric has meant that the relationship between a nation's cultural artefact (cinema) and a very important period of political cultural history has, by and large, been overlooked. This bleaching out is particularly poignant in relation to the costume drama given that, although it purports to speak to history, it often speaks less to the past and more to the present contemporary moment (albeit through the disguise and displacement of the costumes and settings). There is therefore a clear need to investigate thoroughly and more globally this area of French film culture, especially given that the 1950s was one of the most prolific and popular periods for this genre, with the great majority of them attracting large audiences. The following article sets out the general contexts within which this genre needs to be viewed. This article is part of a much longer piece of research I am in the process of writing: a book on the 1950s French costume drama, to be published by Intellect Press (2010).