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Colonial French and Algerian Cinema

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Colonial French and Algerian Cinema Gender and Space in Post- Colonial French and Algerian Cinema Mani Sharpe Thesis for the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy In the School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University Submitted March 2014 i Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University, whose financial support for the first three years of this project made it possible, and Guy Austin and Sarah Leahy, for their constructive criticism, guidance, unfaltering intelligence and astute feedback. This praise also extends to Kathryn Robson, who provided excellent supervision for a number of months of this project. Within this School of Modern Languages, I would like to thank Gary Jenkins for his help organising our Film Factory workshops and Screening Atrocity conference, Tom Watson, for offering a number of insightful remarks regarding a number of papers I gave during the writing of this thesis, and Alex Adams both for his enduring patience during Screening Atrocity and priceless grammatical support during the very final stages of my PhD. Specific gratitude must also be extended to a number of people who were involved in the Film Factory workshops, including Johnny Walker, Katherine Farrimond. Eugenie Johnson, Joe Barton, David Spittle and Chris Baumann; and Screening Atrocity, Beate Muller, Iain Biddle and Maxim Silverman. I also thank Franck Michel and Jean-Christophe Penet for continuing to provide me with teaching work in the final year of my studies. Outside of Newcastle, my thanks extends to Claire Mcleod, Kaya Davis Hayon, Pauline Moret and Maria Flood, who provided encouragement and practical advice in the final few weeks of my project. Finally, I want to thank my friends, Amelia Read, Craig Wells, Jonathan Kearney, Sebastian Saffari, Ed Eyre and Natasha Powick, for not talking about my thesis, and, my family, who I always have time for. ii Abstract This thesis explores representations of narrative space and gender in 1960s French and Algerian cinema; an era marked, in both countries, by the spectre of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). Until now, the two forms of cinema which arose out of this war have rarely been analysed in relation to each other. Doing so provides a crucial insight into how the dynamics of decolonization led to analogous patterns of cinematic representation- particularly in relation to patterns of gender and space. This thesis will be split into four chapters. In the first chapter, I provide a general overview of my methodological approach, the specific theorists that have informed my research, and a socio-cultural overview of the period focusing in particular on issues of space and gender. The second chapter will then shift to textual analysis, illustrating how a number of French films of the period, including Adieu Philippine (Rozier 1962), La Belle vie (Enrico 1963), Muriel ou le temps d’un retour (Resnais 1963), and Le Boucher (Chabrol 1969), critique a post-colonial modernization drive predicated upon neo-colonial processes of spatial marginalization in representing the domestic sphere as ‘contaminated’ by the figure of a traumatised appelé. In this respect, patterns of narrative space will shown to be intrinsically intertwined with the politics of anti-colonial resistance. In the second half of this chapter, I will show how this desire to critique colonialism coexists with a gendered conservatism which elides or in some cases completely ignores the feminist agenda pursued by women (and men) during the 1960s. The third chapter will then discuss how the attainment of national sovereignty impacted upon Algerian cinema of the period. Within this framework, I will firstly show how La Bataille d’Alger (Pontecorvo 1966), Le Vent des Aurès (Lakhdar-Hamina 1966) and L’Opium et le bâton (Rachedi 1969) use representations of spatial transgression (from the private to the public realm) as a signifier for anti-colonial resistance. Nevertheless- as with the French films of the era- I will then draw attention to the ways in which these films draw from a constellation of retrograde gendered ideals in their depiction of the Revolution. The fourth chapter will then explore the few films which do not fit into this taxonomy, instead using patterns of narrative space in order to critique patriarchal ideology. In this section, I will explore films including Cléo de 5 à 7 (Varda 1962), iii Elise ou la vraie vie (Drach 1970), La Bataille d’Alger (Pontecorvo 1966), and La Nouba des Femmes du Mont Chenoua (Djebar 1978). In focusing primarily upon the politics of representation, I believe that this project will facilitate a crucial methodological shift, from the largely ahistorical and apolitical approaches which have previously dominated critical discourse on this period, to an approach instead rooted in the socio-cultural and political reality of the era. iv Contents Title page i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Contents v List of Figures viii Chapter 1. Introduction 1.1. Introduction 1 1.1.2 From dichotomy to dialogue 1 1.1.3 Specific limitations in existing scholarship 5 1.1.4 Advantages of focusing upon representations of narrative space and gender 7 1.1.5 Corpus 12 1.1.6 Methodology 15 1.1.7 Structure 16 1.2 Literature Review 17 1.2.1 Gender 21 1.2.2 Space 32 1.3 Historical Contextualization 42 1.3.1 Gender: masculine resistance and female domesticity 42 1.3.2 Space: migration and reprivatisation 49 1.3.3 Summary 54 Chapter 2. French Cinema 2.1 Narrative space in French cinema 55 2.1.1 Adieu Philippine: Dédé, the (domestic) silent witness 55 2.1.2 La Belle vie: undermining the domestic ideal 59 2.1.3 Muriel ou le temps d’un retour: contaminating the domestic realm 66 2.1.4 Le Boucher: violent domestic penetration 73 2.1.5 Conclusion 80 v 2.2 Conservative Sexual Politics in French Cinema 82 2.2.1 Adieu Philippine 83 Women: derision and the domestic 83 Men: machismo, independence, martyrdom 87 2.2.2 La Belle vie 92 Women: epistemological deprivation and the ‘containment’ of female sexuality 92 Men: from emasculated anti-hero to patriarchal ideal 97 2.2.3 Muriel ou le temps d’un retour 101 Women: alienation and dependency 101 Men: the violent search for masculine identity 108 2.2.4 Le Boucher 112 Women: from maternal frigidity to sexual perversion 113 Men: masculinity in crisis 117 2.2.5 Conclusion 122 Chapter 3. Algerian Cinema 3.1 Narrative Space in Algerian Cinema 124 3.1.1 The significance of space in post-colonial Algerian culture 124 3.1.2 Le Vent des Aurès 125 Influence: Soviet cinema and colonial discourse 126 From private (domestic) to public space 129 3.1.3 Les Hors-la-loi 131 Influence: the classic Western and Berber culture 132 From bled el makhzen to bled es siba 135 3.1.4 L’Opium et le bâton 138 Influence: literary realism, Soviet cinema and Hollywood spectacle 138 From urban to (revolutionary) rural space 140 3.1.5 Conclusion 142 3.2 Conservative Sexual Politics in Algerian Cinema 143 3.2.1 Le Vent des Aurès 143 Men: ‘absent’ fathers and le fils-avant-tout 143 vi Women: la mère-avant-tout 145 3.2.2 Les Hors-la-loi 149 Men: the ethics and aesthetics of le nif 149 Women: hurma-haram and la femme fatale 152 3.2.3 L’Opium et le bâton 156 Men: myth, martyrdom and the Fanonian ‘New Man’ 156 Women: victimization, maternity and mourning 163 3.2.4 Conclusion 165 Chapter 4. Challenging Patriarchal Ideology Through Patterns of Narrative Space 4.1 French Cinema 167 4.1.1 Cléo de 5 à 7: occupying the street 167 4.1.2 Elise ou la vraie vie: occupying the factory line 178 4.2 Algerian Cinema 186 4.2.1 La Bataille d’Alger: transgressing the colonial city 186 4.2.2 La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua: transgressing the threshold 193 4.2.3 Conclusion 200 Conclusion 5.1 Conclusion 202 Bibliography 208 Filmography 223 vii List of Figures Figure 1. Fragile domestic harmony in Enrico’s La Belle vie (1963) 64 Figure 2. Disrupted domesticity in Resnais’s Muriel (1963) 71 Figure 3. Liliane and Juliette as archetypal ‘gamines’ in Rozier’s Adieu Philippine (1962) 85 Figure 4. Maternal frigidity and masculine impotence in Chabrol’s Le Boucher (1969) 114 Figure 5. Masculine imprisonment and escape in Farès’s Les Hors-la-loi (1969) 134 Figure 6. Veiled female suffering in Lakhdar-Hamina’s Le Vent des Aurès (1966) 146 Figure 7. Inhabiting the (masculine) space of the street in Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962) 175 Figure 8. Urban margins in Drach’s Elise ou la vraie vie (1970) 181 Figure 9. Female urban resistance in Pontecorvo’s La Bataille d’Alger (1966) 190 Figure 10. Domestic symbolic violence in Djebar’s La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua (1978) 194 viii Chapter 1. Introduction 1.1. Introduction 1.1.2 From dichotomy to dialogue It is not an exaggeration to claim that the two forms of cinema that emerged in France and Algeria in the years of decolonization have rarely been discussed together.1 As regards scholarship on French cinema of the period, French critics have generally tended to focus almost exclusively upon what has retrospectively been labelled the New Wave (1958-1962),2 that is a group of films which attempted to break with cinematic conventions through an ‘improvisational (unscripted) aesthetic’ and unmannered cinematographic and editing style (Cook 1985: 40). A huge corpus of works has been dedicated to exploring the impact of the New Wave on France’s social and cinematic history (see, for example, early commentaries on the movement that appeared in the journals Cahiers du cinéma and Positif, alongside more recent works, Monaco 1977; de Baecque 2003; Neupert 2003).
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