Living the Past through French Heritage Film: Historical Thinking and Cinematic Cultural Memory

Abstract

This thesis examines the French heritage film, a contemporary genre of period drama and historical film in France, which like other nations’ heritage cinema has often been neglected or dismissed by scholars. In comparison to precursor or parallel genres designated as “serious historical film”, such as the “New History film”, the heritage genre is typically regarded as a costume drama of fantasy, “romance and adventure”, presenting “history as spectacle” for audiences’ entertainment and “visual pleasure” in a largely surface reconstitution of history. In terms of cultural memory, French heritage cinema is generally confined to being a reflection of present socio-political contexts or a celebratory cinematic vehicle of “nostalgia”. My study sets up however the hypothesis that the genre encourages “historical thinking”, providing a deep understanding of the past that engages with historical discourse. It examines French heritage films against historical texts, biographies, memoirs, archival films, photos, period paintings and objects, considering the films’ effect of authenticity, historical realism and fidelity to the past. My research investigates how the “corporeal effect” of heritage cinema’s cinematographic language, through its “visual and aural sensuality”, stimulates spectators to acquire a complex, multi-layered, multi-faceted “cinematic cultural memory” of historical figures, events and landscapes. It argues that through the embodiment effect of contemporary filmic technologies, audiences are immersed in a vividly real history of enhanced colours, surround sound, widescreen high-definition, with multi-camera action, advanced crane movement, aerial filming and digital effects, where spectators have the sensation of a past not directly lived. Addressing the dilemma of a genre simultaneously incarnating auteur/art-house and popular cinema, the impact of auteurism and of stardom is also explored. The corpus includes heritage films Life and Nothing But (Tavernier: 1989), A Very Long Engagement (Jeunet: 2004), Madame Bovary (Chabrol: 1991), Camille Claudel (Nuytten: 1988) and La Reine Margot (Chéreau: 1994).