ASPECTS OF WORLD CINEMA

Aspects of World Cinema

Aspects of World Cinema

Introduction

Poetic realism was a cinematic style that emerged in France during the 1930s, the peak of that nation's classic period of filmmaking. With its roots in realist literature, this movement combined working-class milieus and downbeat story lines with moody, proto-noir art direction and lighting to stylishly represent contemporary social conditions. Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko, with the iconic Jean Gabin as the titular antihero, is generally regarded as the start of this melancholic, often fatalistic brand of cinema, which in part reflected the ominous atmosphere of prewar France but also lent itself to the individual sensibilities of a wide range of brilliant directors, such as Jean Renoir (Grand Illusion, La bête humaine) and Marcel Carné (Le jour se lève), and set designers like Alexandre Trauner (Braudy 1989).

Discussion

While Murnau was filming Tabu in the South Pacific, a movement known as "poetic realism" began to take shape in France. Starting in the early 1930s, films such as Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934); Marie Epstein's La Maternelle (Children of Montmartre, 1934); Jean Renoir's Toni (1935), Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange , 1935), and La Bête humaine (The Human Beast , 1938); Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937); and Marcel Carnés Le Jour se lève (Daybreak, 1939) constituted one of the most successful movements in European cinema. Poetic realism may be seen as realist in its refusal of some of the conventions of Hollywood (most notably the happy end), its strong sense of place (which included both location shooting and the sets of designers such as Alexandre Trauner [1906-1993]), its tackling of the social questions of the day (such as unemployment, poverty, and alcoholism), and its depiction of the lives of the working poor. As early as 1930, Jean Vigo ...