South Central Review

When one reflects upon the history of French cinema, France’s sense of identity and self-confidence inevitably come to mind. To arrive at an understanding of how the multifaceted aspects of French cinema are intertwined with its sense of identity and self-confidence, Hugo Frey’s Nationalism and the Cinema in France: Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945–1995 provides the necessary well-researched framework. By examining the works of such notable directors as Michel Audiard, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Marcel Pagnol, Jean Renoir, Jacques Tati, and François Truffaut, Frey demonstrates how he is able to discuss the post-war period of France through the cinematic lens:

This book aims to be a discussion about a place: the problematic and contested area that we call France, shaped externally as well as internally by migrations and changing geopolitical framing. It is also focused on a time: what is increasingly being called the postwar period, 1945–1995, the latter date coinciding with the centenary of the invention of cinema.

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To arrive at his conclusions, Frey further elucidates:

And the primary evidence that I am working on is the cinema, ranging from analysis of important films from a variety of genres to press reviews, writings from the rich supply of specialist cinema periodicals, film festival events and other forms of reception. These documents are to be critically analyzed through the tool of historical description and reconstruction to consider whether they have been explicit or implicit conduits for nationalism.

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Comprised of an introduction (“From International ‘High Art’ to the Parisian Political Melee), seven chapters (“The Cinema of Self-promotion: Patriotic Subtests in ‘Films about Films’”; “The Search for National Unity through History”; “The Representation of a Modern Chic People”; “A Paradox in Anti-Americanism: Public Protest and Visual Ambiguity”; “The Maintenance of Neocolonial Attitudes”; “The Persistence of Anti-Semitism”; and, “The Cinema and the Extreme Right-wing Undercurrent”), a conclusion, bibliography and index, Frey’s text adeptly analyzes nationalism in French cinema by exhibiting [End Page 84] its connections with right-wing politics and not, as one would presume, with left-wing anti-Hollywoodism.

For example, having both taught French films that deal with the World War II Occupation of France and the problematic process of remembering and forgetting as well as having co-directed a documentary on the same period, I was particularly intrigued by Frey’s chapter on anti-Semitism (Chapter Six). His analysis opens with the six-month Claude Autant-Lara Affair (in 1989, representing the Front National, veteran director Autant-Lara was elected to the European Parliament and used his position to draw attention to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s cause) and continues with how anti-Semitic nationalism was discussed in postwar cinema debates and select films from the 1945–1989 period. Frey shows how even though Autant-Lara’s public anti-Semitic rhetoric was shocking enough insomuch as he was the only major figure aside from Michel Audiard to be so vociferous in his comments, his comments appeared even more scandalous because they seemed unusual but in reality were not.

A quick overview of Frey’s other chapters help to outline his systematic approach. Chapter One offers a new approach to specific films, most notably François Truffaut’s La Nuit américaine, by showcasing the process of filmmaking itself. Chapter Two addresses collective memory and the role of history films. Clearly referencing such crucial works as Henry Rousso’s Le Syndrome de Vichy, Sylvie Lindeperg’s Les Écrans de l’ombre and Shlomo Sand’s Le XXe siècle à l’écran, Frey has a threefold approach for his contribution to this discussion:

1. 1.) It details and describes how cinema and film events worked consistently until the early 1970s to assert national pride through images of the wartime resistance. This mythmaking is important for our subject...