Cinema 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 Luc Besson was lumped with two other directors who shared "le look." ^[2] These directors were said to favor style over substance, spectacle over narrative.^[3]. It referred to films that had a slick visual style^[3] and a focus on young, alienated characters that were said to represent the marginalised youth of François Mitterrand's France.^[4] The three main directors of the Cinéma du look were Jean-Jacques Beineix, Luc Besson and Leos Carax. Themes that run through many of their films include doomed love affairs, young people with peer groups rather than families, a cynical view of the police and the use of 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, 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

• 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 0-719070287
2. ^ Berra, John (June 2009). "Book Reviews: The Films of Luc Besson: Master of Spectacle". Scope (14). http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/bookreview.php?issue=14&id=1154. Retrieved 2011-05-29. 
3. ^ ^{a b c} Austin, Guy. Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction, Manchester University Press, 1999, pp. 119–120, 126-128. ISBN 0719046114
4. ^ French Cinema — Powrie & Reader
5. ^ Bordwell; Thompson, p. 620.

Bibliography

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

Sources and external links

• Patricia Allmer - Institute of Film Studies, University of Nottingham
• Will da Shaman, Netribution Film Network
• Guy Austin "Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction" A Review by J. Emmett Winn