Chanteuse in the City

The Realist Singer in French Film (book in English)

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by Kelley Conway

Type

Studies

Subject

Countries > France

Keywords

French cinema, song, 1930s

Publishing date

2010

Publisher

University of California Press

Collection

(non-series)

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 276 pages • 27,57 €
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-0-520-24407-8

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Book Presentation:
Long before Edith Piaf sang "La vie en rose," her predecessors took to the stage of the belle epoque music hall, singing of female desire, the treachery of men, the harshness of working-class life, and the rough neighborhoods of Paris. Icon of working-class femininity and the underworld, the realist singer signaled the emergence of new cultural roles for women as well as shifts in the nature of popular entertainment. Chanteuse in the City provides a genealogy of realist performance through analysis of the music hall careers and film roles of Mistinguett, Josephine Baker, Fréhel, and Damia. Above all, Conway offers a fresh interpretation of 1930s French cinema, emphasizing its love affair with popular song and its close connections to the music hall and the café-concert. Conway uncovers an important tradition of female performance in the golden era of French film, usually viewed as a cinema preoccupied with masculinity. She shows how-in films such as Pépé le Moko, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, and Zouzou-the realist chanteuse addresses female despair at the hopelessness of love. Conway also sheds light on the larger cultural implications of the shift from the intimate café-concert to the spectacular music hall, before the talkies displaced both kinds of live performance altogether.

See the publisher website: University of California Press