Among the most innovative and influential filmmakers of the twentieth century, Alain Resnais (1922-2014) did not originally set out to become a director. He trained as an actor and film editor and, during the sixty-eight years of his working life, delved into virtually every corner of filmmaking, working at one time or another as screenwriter, assistant director, camera operator and cinematographer, special effects coordinator, technical consultant, and even author of source material. From such award-winning documentaries as Van Gogh and Night and Fog to the groundbreaking dramas Hiroshima mon amour, Last Year at Marienbad, and Muriel, Resnais's films experiment with such themes as consciousness, memory, and the imagination. Distinguishing himself from associations with the French New Wave movement, Resnais considered his films to be ""anti-illusionist,"" never allowing his spectators to forget they were watching a work of art. In Alain Resnais: Interviews, editor Lynn A. Higgins collects twenty-one interviews with the filmmaker, twelve of which are translated into English for the first time. Spanning his entire career from his early short subjects to his final feature film, the volume highlights Resnais's creative strategies and principles, illuminates his place in world cinema history, and situates his work relative to the New Wave, American film, and experimental filmmaking more broadly. Like his films, the interviews collected here reveal a creator who is at once an intellectual, a philosopher, an entertainer, a craftsman, and an artist.

Bertrand Tavernier (b. 1941) is widely considered to be the leading light in a generation of French filmmakers who launched their careers in the 1970s, in the wake of the New Wave. In just over forty years, he has directed twenty-two feature films in an eclectic range of genres, from intimate family portrait to historical drama and neo-Western. Beginning with his debut feature--L'Horloger de Saint-Paul (1974), which won the prestigious Louis Delluc prize--Tavernier has shown himself to be a public intellectual. Like his films, he is deeply engaged with the pressing issues facing France and the world: the consequences of war, colonialism and its continuing aftermath, the price of heroism, and the power of art. A voracious cinephile, he is immensely knowledgeable about world cinema and American film in particular. Tavernier's roots are in Lyon, the birthplace of the cinema. He founded and presides over the Institut Lumiere, which hosts retrospectives and an annual film festival in the factory where the Lumiere brothers made the first films. In this collection, containing numerous interviews translated from French and available in English for the first time, he discusses the arc of his career following in the lineage of the Lumiere brothers, in that his goal, like theirs, is to ""show the world to the world."" It is no surprise, then, that an interview with Tavernier is a treat. Beginning with discussions of his own films, the interviews in this volume cover a vast range of topics. At the core are his thoughts about the ways cinema can inspire the imagination and contribute to the broadest possible public conversation.

Over nearly sixty years, Agnes Varda (b. 1928) has given interviews that are revealing not only of her work, but of her remarkably ambiguous status. She has been called the ""Mother of the New Wave"" but suffered for many years for never having been completely accepted by the cinematic establishment in France. Varda's first film, La Pointe Courte (1954), displayed many of the characteristics of the two later films that launched the New Wave, Truffaut's 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless. In a low-budget film, using (as yet) unknown actors and working entirely outside the prevailing studio system, Varda completely abandoned the ""tradition of quality"" that Truffaut was at that very time condemning in the pages of Cahiers du cinema. Her work, however, was not ""discovered"" until after Truffaut and Godard had broken onto the scene in 1959. Varda's next film, Cleo from 5 to 7, attracted considerably more attention and was selected as France's official entry for the Festival in Cannes. Ultimately, however, this film and her work for the next fifty years continued to be overshadowed by her more famous male friends, many of whom she mentored and advised. Her films have finally earned recognition as deeply probing and fundamental to the growing awareness in France of women's issues and the role of women in the cinema. ""I'm not philosophical,"" she says, ""not metaphysical. Feelings are the ground on which people can be led to think about things. I try to show everything that happens in such a way and ask questions so as to leave the viewers free to make their own judgments."" The panoply of interviews here emphasize her core belief that ""we never stop learning"" and reveal the wealth of ways to answer her questions.

"Spectacular" Independent

An uneasy peace reigns in France, but behind the scenes Catholics, Protestants and the agents of foreign powers are still locked in secretive, bloody, combat. As his country's future hangs in the balance, Pierre de Siorac's apparent employment as a doctor masks a more deadly occupation - as a spy working for King Henry IV and his ally Elizabeth I of England, using fair means and foul to protect the peace of two realms.

As the plots against his king thicken and the Spanish Armada prepares to sail, Pierre finds himself struggling to save not only his country, but the lives of his entire family. With his back to the wall, he will need a keen wit and a steady sword arm to fight his way to safety.

"A master of the historical novel" Guardian

After a deadly duel with a jealous rival, Pierre de Siorac must travel to Paris, to seek his pardon from the King. In the capital city he finds a world of sweet words and fierce pride, where coquettish smiles hide behind fans, and murderous intents behind elegant bows. But the court's elaborate social graces mask a simmering tension that will soon explode to engulf the entire city.

When it does, Pierre faces the greatest challenge of his young existence - not merely to win a royal pardon, but to escape from Paris with his life, and the lives of his beloved companions, intact.

"Unraveling French Cinema" provides a much needed introduction to the complexities of French film for students, cineastes, and the movie-loving public.

Looks at the differences between French and American national cinema

Explores how French directors shape their films around two potentially divergent goals: the narration of a story and an elaboration of some theory about film itself.

Demystifies the "difficulty" of French cinema, allowing the American movie-goer to enjoy films that are too often perplexing at a first viewing.

Offers extended analyses of classic, New Wave, and contemporary French films--including "L'Atalante," "Adele H.", "The Rules of the Game," and "Cache."

Bertrand Tavernier (b. 1941-2021) was widely considered to be the leading light in a generation of French filmmakers who launched their careers in the 1970s in the wake of the New Wave. In just over forty years, he directed twenty-two feature films in an eclectic range of genres from intimate family portrait to historical drama and neo-Western. Beginning with his debut feature-L'Horloger de Saint-Paul (1974), which won the prestigious Louis Delluc prize-Tavernier showed himself to be a public intellectual. Like his films, he was deeply engaged with the pressing issues facing France and the world: the consequences of war, colonialism and its continuing aftermath, the price of heroism, and the power of art. A voracious cinephile, he was immensely knowledgeable about world cinema and American film in particular. Tavernier's roots were in Lyon, the birthplace of the cinema. He founded and presided over the Institut Lumiere, which hosts retrospectives and an annual film festival in the factory where the Lumiere brothers made the first films. In this collection, containing numerous interviews translated from French and available in English for the first time, he discusses the arc of his career following in the lineage of the Lumiere brothers, in that his goal, like theirs, is to "show the world to the world." It is no surprise, then, that an interview with Tavernier is a treat. Beginning with discussions of his own films, the interviews in this volume cover a vast range of topics. At the core are his thoughts about the ways cinema can inspire the imagination and contribute to the broadest possible public conversation.

Cinema has always been "literary" in its desire to tell stories and in its need to borrow plots and narrative techniques from novels. But the French New Wave directors of the 1950s self-consciously rejected the idea that film was a mere extension of literature. With subversive techniques that exploded traditional methods of film narrative, they embraced fragmentation and alienation. Their cinema would be literature's rival, not its apprentice. In "Screening the Text," T. Jefferson Kline argues that the New Wave's rebellious stance is far more complex and problematic than critics have acknowledged. Challenging conventional views of film and literature in postwar France, Kline explores the New Wave's unconscious obsession with the tradition it claimed to reject. He uncovers the wide range of the literary and cultural texts--American films, classical mythology, French literature, and a variety of Russian, Norwegian, German, and English writers and philosophers--as "screened" in seven films: Truffaut's "Jules et Jim"; Malle's "Les Amants"; Resnais's "L'Annee derniere a Marienbad"; Chabrol's "Le Beau Serge"; Rohmer's "Ma Nuit chez Maud"; Bresson's "Pickpocket"; and Godard's "Pierrot le fou."

Among the most innovative and influential filmmakers of the twentieth century, Alain Resnais (1922-2014) did not originally set out to become a director. He trained as an actor and film editor and, during the sixty-eight years of his working life, delved into virtually every corner of filmmaking, working at one time or another as screenwriter, assistant director, camera operator and cinematographer, special effects coordinator, technical consultant, and even author of source material. From such award-winning documentaries as Van Gogh and Night and Fog to the groundbreaking dramas Hiroshima mon amour, Last Year at Marienbad, and Muriel, Resnais's films experiment with such themes as consciousness, memory, and the imagination. Distinguishing himself from associations with the French New Wave movement, Resnais considered his films to be ""anti-illusionist,"" never allowing his spectators to forget they were watching a work of art. In Alain Resnais: Interviews, editor Lynn A. Higgins collects twenty-one interviews with the filmmaker, twelve of which are translated into English for the first time. Spanning his entire career from his early short subjects to his final feature film, the volume highlights Resnais's creative strategies and principles, illuminates his place in world cinema history, and situates his work relative to the New Wave, American film, and experimental filmmaking more broadly. Like his films, the interviews collected here reveal a creator who is at once an intellectual, a philosopher, an entertainer, a craftsman, and an artist.

Over nearly sixty years, Agnes Varda (b. 1928) has given interviews that are revealing not only of her work, but of her remarkably ambiguous status. She has been called the ""Mother of the New Wave"" but suffered for many years for never having been completely accepted by the cinematic establishment in France. Varda's first film, La Pointe Courte (1954), displayed many of the characteristics of the two later films that launched the New Wave, Truffaut's 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless. In a low-budget film, using (as yet) unknown actors and working entirely outside the prevailing studio system, Varda completely abandoned the ""tradition of quality"" that Truffaut was at that very time condemning in the pages of Cahiers du cinema. Her work, however, was not ""discovered"" until after Truffaut and Godard had broken onto the scene in 1959. Varda's next film, Cleo from 5 to 7, attracted considerably more attention and was selected as France's official entry for the Festival in Cannes. Ultimately, however, this film and her work for the next fifty years continued to be overshadowed by her more famous male friends, many of whom she mentored and advised. Her films have finally earned recognition as deeply probing and fundamental to the growing awareness in France of women's issues and the role of women in the cinema. ""I'm not philosophical,"" she says, ""not metaphysical. Feelings are the ground on which people can be led to think about things. I try to show everything that happens in such a way and ask questions so as to leave the viewers free to make their own judgments."" The panoply of interviews here emphasize her core belief that ""we never stop learning"" and reveal the wealth of ways to answer her questions.