The Art of Directing: A Concise Dictionary of France’s Film Directors

«This erudite and informative book on French film directors is a comprehensive deep dive into the multi-faceted and interconnected landscape of Francophone cinema. From Akerman to Zidi, via Godard and Gondry, the volume marshals an impressive range of scholars who demonstrate how the French ‘art of directing’ – whether from established legends or emerging voices – is a blend of the perceptive, the provocative and the populist.»

(Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide)

«This impressive book is full of passion and fun facts. A wonderful work of scholarship, comprehensive and yet personable.»

(Dr Christophe Gagne, Associate Professor in French, University of Cambridge)

«The Art of Directing is a fabulous new resource for everyone interested in French cinema. Scholars and film-lovers alike will find much to be informed and inspired by in its concise but rich entries on 121 different directors. This will be the starting point for anyone wanting to know more about the directors who have shaped French cinema from the silent era to the present day.»

(Mairi McLaughlin, Professor of French, University of California, Berkeley)

«From Chantal Akerman to Claude Zidi, from auteur cinema to mainstream filmmaking, this wide-ranging book explores the world of French film directors, many ignored by critics until now. It includes entries by specialists from around the world and will be essential reading for students and lovers of the French-speaking world and film buffs alike.»

(Professor Nina Parish, Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Sterling)

«The Art of Directing is an indispensable tool for anyone interested in French cinema since its beginning. This volume takes us on a fascinating journey where we will meet not only leading figures of the seventh art but also littleknown filmmakers. Comprehensive, thorough, and impressively researched.»

(Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, Professor of French, University of Warwick)

It is not by chance that films by Renoir, Bresson, Varda, Godard, or Truffaut – to name just a few – have become widely studied around the world, with their directors becoming household names. Yet there are so many others who have made their mark on French and international cinema. The aim of this dictionary is to shed light on the directing process and to help people discover forgotten directors and rediscover prominent ones who have made Francophone cinema what it is today.

This book is intended as a reference resource for students, scholars, and academics as well as film lovers, who will find both biographical and filmographic references, allowing them to gain an understanding in a nutshell of a particular director’s career and its influences as well as its impact upon and legacy for the world of French cinema – and beyond. When one considers all the directors who have impacted French cinema – from the silent era to our current digital and streaming age – this work is as exhaustive and inclusive as possible.

Michaël Abecassis is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on French linguistics and cinema. His publications include The Representation of Parisian Speech in the Cinema of the 1930s (2005) and Le Français parlé au XXIème siècle, in two volumes, with Laure Ayosso and Elodie Vialleton (2008), among others. He is the editor, with Marcelline Block, of French Cinema in Close-up: La Vie d'un acteur pour moi (2015).

Marcelline Block’s publications include the Boston, Paris, Prague, Las Vegas and Marseille volumes of the World Film Locations series; Fan Phenomena: Marilyn Monroe (2015); and the first French-to-English translation of Jean-Pierre Bertin-Maghit’s Propaganda Documentaries in France, 1940–1944 (2016). She also co-edited Plurilingual Perspectives in Geolinguistics (2nd edn, 2016) and The Directory of World Cinema: Belgium (2014), among others. With Michaël Abecassis, she edited French Cinema in Close-up: La Vie d'un acteur pour moi (2015).

Felicity Chaplin is Lecturer in European Languages (French) at Monash University, Australia. She is the author of two books, Charlotte Gainsbourg: Transnational and Transmedia Stardom (2020) and La Parisienne in Cinema: Between Art and Life (2017) and is a contributor to the edited collections Refocus: The Films of François Ozon (2021) and Remembering Paris in Text and Film (2021).