Chanteuse in the city : the realist singer in French film / Kelley Conway.

ISBN:

9780520938571

Title:

Author:

Conway, Kelley, 1963-

Personal Author:

Conway, Kelley, 1963-

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 246 pages) : illustrations

Contents:

Introduction -- Caf-conc' : the rise of the unruly woman -- Music hall Miss -- Voices from the past -- The revue star and the realist singer : the return of the unruly woman -- Violent spectatorship : mechanical reproduction, the female voice, and the imaginary of intimacy -- Conclusion.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Motion picture music -- France -- History and criticism.

Women singers -- France.

Motion pictures -- France -- History.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2004

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
782.421640820944 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

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.

Author Notes

Conway Kelley :

Kelley Conway is Assistant Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

According to Conway (communication, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison), the world-weary chanteuse of 1930s French film conveys the postwar "lost sense of community" but also foreshadows the "newer, more threatening conception of modern femininity associated with the twentieth century, the city, and mass culture." This historical study looks at the singers' voice and persona and the songs' themes and context in live performance and film. Tracing singers from the 1860s cafe-concerts (Eugenie Buffet, Yvette Guilbert) to the music hall (Mistinguett) to early sound film (Frehel, Josephine Baker), the author demonstrates that the figure of the chanteuse grew from a projection of male fantasy to a woman authoring "her own version of Paris." The new femininity of Damia and Louise Brooks, linked to narrative style and new technologies, generated "male anxiety ... even madness." The chanteuse's cultural legacy persisted in the persona and performances of Edith Piaf. Jean Gabin absorbed the figure's "textual functions in the cinema," preserving "women's autonomy and sexuality" in a predominantly male medium. Conway's close scene analyses make this a major addition to studies in French film, the star system, performance, gender, and class. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. M. Yacowar University of Calgary