The French Film Musical: Phil Powrie and Marie Cadalanu

Like many national cinemas, the French cinema has a rich tradition of film musicals beginning with the advent of sound to the present. This is the first book to chart the development of the French film musical. The French film musical is remarkable for its breadth and variety since the 1930s; although it flirts with the Hollywood musical in the 1930s and again in the 1950s, it has very distinctive forms rooted in the traditions of French chanson . Defining it broadly as films attracting audiences principally because of musical performances, often by well-known singers, Phil Powrie and Marie Cadalanu show how the genre absorbs two very different traditions with the advent of sound: European operetta and French chanson inflected by American jazz (1930-1950). As the genre matures, operetta develops into big-budget spectaculars with popular tenors, and revue films also showcase major singers in this period (1940-1960). Both sub-genres collapse with the advent of rock n roll, leading to a period of experimentation during the New Wave (1960-1990). The contemporary period since 1995 renews the genre, returning nostalgically both to the genre's origins in the 1930s, and to the musicals of Jacques Demy, but also hybridising with other genres, such as the biopic and the documentary. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Illustrations Note on the text Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Multi-language versions Chapter 3: The French operetta film Chapter 4: Pills and Tabet and the Marseille operetta Chapter 5: Fréhel and Édith Piaf Chapter 6: Josephine Baker and Charles Trenet Chapter 7: The classical music film Chapter 8: The big-band film Chapter 9: The musical sketch film Chapter 10: Tino Rossi Chapter 11: Georges Guétary and Luis Mariano Chapter 12: The transition to the modern musical Chapter 13: Jacques Demy Chapter 14: Around Demy Chapter 15: The opera film and the modern classical music film Chapter 16: The modern auteur musical Chapter 17: The fairy-tale musical and the documentary musical Chapter 18: Conclusion Filmography References Index "A history of the French film musical from 1929 to the present"-- Provided by publisher