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Encore Hollywood: Remaking French Cinema

01/09/2000

169 pp

Published/distributed by BFI Publishing

ISBN/EAN: 9780851708010

Paperback

Price: £6.99

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Encore Hollywood: Remaking French Cinema

Mazdon, Lucy

Since 1980, Hollywood has remade over thirty French films and the practice continues to grow apace - its prevalence underlined by high-profile commercial successes such as Three Men and a Baby (1987), True Lies (1994) and The Birdcage (1996). French cinema has long been marked by an insistence upon its independence from Hollywood and the need to maintain its identity in the face of an influx of American movies. The remake process is typically perceived by French critics as a worrying symptom of this cultural threat. Hollywood 'vampirises' French films, produces crass copies and so shakes the very foundations of a uniquely French cinema.

The sheer frequency of the Hollywood remake, as well as French attempts to 'protect' their 'national' idustry, demonstrate the prominence of inter-cultural exchange within the cinema industries and the impact such processes are having on constructions of cultural identity. This extremely timely study of the Hollywood remake, from 1930 to the present day, details examples of such cinematic exchanges and French reactions to them. By revealing the ways in which these processes intersect with very pressing questions of global exchange, national identity and their place within the media industries, this book makes a valuable contribution to much broader debates about contemporary European cinema and culture.

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