French Film in the Blockbuster Era by Charlie Michael

The digitised spectacles conjured by a word like `blockbuster' may create a certain cognitive dissonance with received ideas about French cinema - long celebrated as a model for philosophical, economic and aesthetic resistance to globalised popular culture. While the Gallic `cultural exception' remains a forceful current to this day, this book shows how the onslaught of Hollywood mega-franchises and new media platforms since the 1980s has also provoked an overtly commercialised response from French producers eager to redefine the stakes and scope of their own traditions. Cutting across a swath of recent French-produced cinema, French Blockbusters offers the first book-length consideration of the theoretical implications, historical impact and cultural consequences of recent popular films that are rapidly changing what it means to make - or to see - a `French' film today. From English-language action vehicles like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Besson, 2017) to revisionist historical films like Of Gods and Men (Beauvois, 2011) and crowd-pleasing comedies like Intouchables (Toledano & Nakache, 2011), the variously filiated `local blockbusters' from contemporary France brim with the seeds of cultural contradiction, but also with the energy of a forceful counter-history.

About the Author
Charlie Michael earned his PhD in Film Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently teaches cinema and media studies courses at several institutions in the Atlanta area. He co-edited the Directory of World Cinema: France (Intellect, 2013) and his work has also appeared in SubStance, The Velvet Light Trap, Quebec Studies, French Politics, Culture & Society, and A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema.


Book Information
ISBN 9781474424233
Author Charlie Michael
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint Edinburgh University Press
Publisher Edinburgh University Press
Series Traditions in World Cinema