Cinéma du look

Cinéma du look was a French film movement of the 1980s, analysed, for the first time, by French critic Raphaël Bassan in La Revue du Cinéma issue n° 448, May 1989,^[1] in which he classified Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax as directors of "le look".^[2] These directors were said to favor style over substance, spectacle over narrative.^[3] It referred to films that had a slick, gorgeous visual style^[3] and a focus on young, alienated characters who were said to represent the marginalized youth of François Mitterrand's France.^[4] Themes that run through many of their films include doomed love affairs, young people more affiliated to peer groups rather than families, a cynical view of the police, and the use of scenes in the Paris Métro to symbolise an alternative, underground society. The mixture of 'high' culture, such as the opera music of Diva and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, and pop culture, for example the references to Batman in Subway, was another key feature.^[3]

Origins

French filmmakers were inspired by New Hollywood films (most notably Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart and Rumble Fish), late Fassbinder films (Lola), television commercials, music videos, and fashion photography.^[5]

Key directors and key films

Jean-Jacques Beineix

• Diva (1981)
• 37°2 le matin (English: Betty Blue) (1986)

Luc Besson

• Subway (1985)
• Le Grand bleu (English: The Big Blue) (1988)
• Nikita (1990)

Leos Carax

• Boy Meets Girl (1984)
• Mauvais Sang (1986)
• Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991)

Notes

Footnotes

1. Translate in English : The French neo-baroques directors : Beineix, Besson, Carax from Diva to le Grand Bleu (pp. 11 – 23), in The Films of Luc Besson: Master of Spectacle (Under the direction of Susan Hayward and Phil Powrie) Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-7190-7028-7
2. Berra, John (June 2009). "Book Reviews: The Films of Luc Besson: Master of Spectacle". Scope (14). Retrieved 2011-05-29.
3. Austin, Guy. Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction, Manchester University Press, 1999, pp. 119–120, 126-128. ISBN 0-7190-4611-4
4. French Cinema — Powrie & Reader
5. Bordwell & Thompson 2003, p. 620.

Bibliography

• Bordwell, David; Thompson, Kristin (2002). Film History: An Introduction (2nd ed.). ISBN 0-07-038429-0.

External links

• Patricia Allmer - Institute of Film Studies, University of Nottingham, 2004
• Will da Shaman, Netribution Film Network
• Guy Austin, Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction, A Review by J. Emmett Winn, see Austin pages 5 and 6
• Essays on Luc Besson : Master of Spectacle (review), by William Brown, 2009
• The Cinéma du look and fantasy films, by Guy Austin in Contemporary French Cinema, Manchester University Press, 1996, p. 119
• Diva, Jean-Jacques Beineix in The Cinema of France, by Phil Powrie, p. 154, Wallflower Press, 2006
• Luc Besson : The Cinema du Look or the Spectacle-Image in Cinema after Deleuze by Richard Ruston, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012, p. 132