FREN 3470

The Figure of the Outsider in French Cinema

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

This course will trace the changing character of the outsider in French cinema from early realist film to the present day. In opposition to the dominant bourgeois ideals of economic security and social homogeneity, in these films the outsider emerges as someone who cannot, or will not, play by the rules. We will begin with the satirical critiques of bourgeois life through the figure of the bumbling ingrate in the films of Renoir and Tati, then exploring the nouvelle vague of the 1960s and 1970s, its outsiders excapsulating the disenchantments of the post-war generation: Godard's existential gangster, Varda's wandering actress, Truffaut's ménage à trois, Resnais's disturbed Algerian veteran, and Chabrol's disloyal wife. Next, we will address the figure of the immigrant outsider, who does not chose to be separate but rather has exclusion thrust upon them, in Yamina Benguigui's documentary Mémoires d'immigrés and Abdellatif Kechiche's La Graine et le mulet. Finally, we will look at the violence of social exclusion and the volatile and threatening outsiders it seems to produce, figures who linger menacingly on the edges of a comfortable bourgeois world: Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, Michael Haneke's Caché and Jacques Audiard's Un prophète. Along the way, we will get to know the way the genres, techniquess and cinematic personalities that have shaped Fench cinema as we know it today.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (LA-AS)

Comments Optional film discussion section in French depending on student's knowledge of the language.

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