The Faber book of French cinema - Charles Drazin

Offering portraits of such key figures as the
Lumire brothers, Georges Mlis, Charles Path and Lon Gaumont, he
looks at the early pioneers who transformed a fairground novelty into a
global industry.
The crisis caused by the First World War led France
to surrender her position as the world's dominant film-making power,
but French cinema forged a new role for itself as a beacon of cinematic
possibility and achievement.

Producing such distinctive
film-makers as Jean Renoir, Marcel Pagnol, Sachy Guitry and Julien
Duvivier, the French cinema's Golden Age boasted an intelligence,
maturity and flair that classical Hollywood could admire but struggle to
emulate.

Suggesting a Gallic attitude that has always considered
the cinema to be as much a cause as a business, Drazin looks at the
extraordinary resilience of the French film industry during the Second
World War when, in spite of the national catastrophe of defeat and
occupation, it was still able to produce such classics as Le Corbeau and Les Enfants du Paradis.

Finally,
he traces its remarkable post-war regeneration. He looks at the seminal
impact of the New Wave of film-makers - typified by Truffaut and Godard
-
but also at the other waves that have followed since. As he brings
the story up-to-date - with Jacques Audaird's award-winning A Prophet
- he seeks to capture the essence of the French film tradition and why
it continues to matter to anyone who cares about the cinema.