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Cinema of Paradox
French Filmmaking Under the German Occupation
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Book Presentation:
From 1940 to 1944 the French cinema thrived both economically and artistically under the Nazi occupation. Despite the harsh and grim conditions of defeat, the French film industry produced many good films and a few enduring classics, including Carne's Children of Paradise, one of the most beloved of all French films.
Cinema of Paradox reveals, for the first time in English, the difficult course of French filmmaking from the declaration of war in 1939 through four years of misery to France's liberation in 1944. Evelyn Ehrlich examines the conditions of filmmaking as they reflected the larger political, cultural, and social context within occupied France. And, using previously unexamined German documents, she also looks at the French film business from the occupier's perspective, showing how the Nazis actually encouraged the French to maintain their high cinematic standards to achieve German economic and propaganda goals. Cinema of Paradox goes beyond the old cliches about resistance films versus collaborationist films and in doing so is very much in line with new sophisticated methods of viewing the French experience in World War II.
The book is filled with the famous names of the French cinema: performers such as Jean-Louis Barrault, Simone Signoret, and Harry Baur; directors including Bresson, Carne, and Clouzot; and the films themselves, including Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne and Le Corbeau.
Based on interviews with French filmmakers of the period and on considerable research into French and German sources, Cinema of Paradox will be of interest not only to film historians but to those interested in the history of modern French and Jewish studies as well.
About the Author:
Evelyn Ehrlich, a writer and editor, received her Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University. She has taught at the University of Vermont, the City University of New York, and New York University.
Press Reviews:
Ms. Ehrlich sets Vichy filmmaking firmly in its contemporary context, making the reader understand the precise circumstances facing filmmakers at each successive stage of this rapidly developing period. She has a thorough and nuanced view of the Vichy regime which makes it possible for her to present those circumstances clearly and accurately.... Cinema of Paradox represents a fresh and original point of view. Robert O. Paxton
The best cinema scholarship is coming from unknown territories of film history. Evelyn Ehrlich's study of French films during the German occupation, based on her extraordinary probing research, is a revelation of a hitherto obscured chapter of art and politics. Jay Leyda
See the publisher website: Columbia University Press
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