Vulgar, Nasty and French: French Cinema in Britain in the 1950s

Abstract

The nation that created the New Wave and elevated film-makers such as Godard and Truffaut to god-like status, can no longer bear to sit through anything that smacks of seriousness or pretension. So great has the public’s aversion to art house cinema become that one distributor has warned that the very French species of the cinephile – the discerning movie-buff who ignores marketing hype and seeks out intellectual masterpieces – is becoming extinct.1