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Author Michael, Charlie, author.

Title French blockbusters : cultural politics of a transnational cinema / Charlie Michael
Published Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2019]
©2019

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Description 1 online resource (xvii, 236 pages) : illustrations (black and white)
Series Traditions in World Cinema
Traditions in world cinema.
Contents The Lang Plan and its aftermath -- Popular French cinema and 'cultural diversity' -- The debatable destiny of Amelie Poulain -- Valerian and the planet of a thousand critics -- Countercurrents in French action cinema -- Serial (bad?) French comedies -- A disputed heritage
Summary 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Blockbusters (Motion pictures) -- France -- History -- 20th century
Motion pictures -- Political aspects -- France
Transnationalism in motion pictures.
HISTORY -- Europe -- France.
Blockbusters (Motion pictures)
Motion pictures -- Political aspects
Transnationalism in motion pictures
France
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781474424240
1474424244
9781474424257
1474424252