Foreword: French Blockbusters. Cultural Politics of a Transnational Cinema

Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb (1)

1 LARA-SEPPIA - Laboratoire de Recherche en Audiovisuel - Savoirs, Praxis et Poïétiques en Art

Rethinks the transnational dimensions of the contemporary French film industry 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 a swath through 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 counter-history.

Mots clés: Blockbusters; European Cinema; Transnational Cinema; French film industry; Film industry; Film economics; Entertainment Industry; Entertainment economy; French Cinema; Blockbuster Products

Domaines: Sciences de l'information et de la communication; Théorie de l'information [cs.IT]; Sciences de l'information et de la communication

Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb. Foreword: French Blockbusters. Cultural Politics of a Transnational Cinema. Charlie Michael. French Blockbusters: Cultural Politics of a Transnational Cinema, Edinburgh University Press, pp.xiv-xviii, 2021, Traditions in World Cinema, 9781474484275. ⟨10.1515/9781474424240⟩. ⟨hal-04464754⟩