Chanteuse in the City
The Realist Singer in French Film (book in English)
Average rating:
0 | rating | = We can do without |
0 | rating | = Good book |
0 | rating | = Excellent book |
0 | rating | = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
Long before Edith Piaf sang "La vie en rose," her predecessors took to the stage of the belle epoque music hall, singing of female desire, the treachery of men, the harshness of working-class life, and the rough neighborhoods of Paris. Icon of working-class femininity and the underworld, the realist singer signaled the emergence of new cultural roles for women as well as shifts in the nature of popular entertainment. Chanteuse in the City provides a genealogy of realist performance through analysis of the music hall careers and film roles of Mistinguett, Josephine Baker, Fréhel, and Damia. Above all, Conway offers a fresh interpretation of 1930s French cinema, emphasizing its love affair with popular song and its close connections to the music hall and the café-concert. Conway uncovers an important tradition of female performance in the golden era of French film, usually viewed as a cinema preoccupied with masculinity. She shows how-in films such as Pépé le Moko, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, and Zouzou-the realist chanteuse addresses female despair at the hopelessness of love. Conway also sheds light on the larger cultural implications of the shift from the intimate café-concert to the spectacular music hall, before the talkies displaced both kinds of live performance altogether.
See the publisher website: University of California Press
> From the same author:
> On a related topic:
Les Manufactures de nos rêves (2021)
Les studios de cinéma français des années 30
L'Encinéclopédie (2010)
Cinéastes français des années 1930 et leur œuvre, tome 2 L-Z
L'Encinéclopédie (2010)
Cinéastes français des années 1930 et leur œuvre, tome 1 : A-K
Ciné-club (2010)
Portraits, carrières et destins de 250 acteurs du cinéma français (1930-1960)
by Olivier Barrot and Raymond Chirat
Actrices du cinéma français 1929-1944 (2018)
d'Arletty à Kiki de Montparnasse
La bataille du film (2007)
1933-1945, le cinéma français entre allégeance et résistance
by Alain Weber
Note: A book on a beige background is a book published in a language other than French.