1
Introduction
In his brief introduction to the film musical published in 2002 Michel Chion lamented the fact that there existed no history of the French variant (2002: 94). The current book is the first to attempt a critical and cultural history of the French film musical. Provocatively, we will be claiming that the French film musical exists as a major genre of French cinema, and that it has always existed, continuously, since the advent of sound cinema. We will also claim, equally provocatively, that what makes the strength of the French film musical is the reverse side of what has often been seen as its weakness, its inability to consolidate as a genre with recognizable codes in the same way that the Hollywood musical was codified during the 1930s. Our claim is that the strength of the French film musical lies in its refusal to be strictly codified, the variety that it displays as a result, and the difference within the continuity of older musical genres. Within that variety, the echoes of Hollywood, whether mimetic or occasionally parodic, are only one of many ingredients in the genreâs history.
If the Hollywood musicalâs history is one of centripetalism and the gradual consolidation of a solid centre that reached its apogee in the MGM musicals of the 1950s, the French variant in this Hollywood-centric metaphor, while not necessarily centrifugal, is circumferential. There is no solid centre; rather, there are many formulas that ebb and flow as they gesture to a centre, only some of them towards what we might recognize as the Hollywood genre. For that reason we will not be trying to define a âstandardâ variant of the French film musical, as that standard does not and could never exist, for a number of reasons. First, the French industrial context is one of an artisanal production environment, rather than a well-developed studio system. Second, the cultural context is one in which popular song prevails rather than song and dance; as Tom Brown points out (2015), French musical films are less spectacular than Hollywood musicals because they are rooted in the popular cafĂ©-concert tradition, and therefore a more realist space. Finally, there is the historical importance of European forms such as opera and operetta (although we should remember that these also influenced the development of the Hollywood musical). None of these reasons mean that the genre does not exist; it means that it is often radically different from the Hollywood genre and is more diverse and often more experimental because of that diversity.
It is also arguably the most nostalgic genre of French cinema, not just because music and nostalgia are often considered as a pair, but because of the genreâs roots in other musical forms and the way that these live on as recollected practices, whether they are, as Svetlana Boym terms them, ârestorativeâ nostalgia or âreflectiveâ nostalgia. The first is the more conservative gesture that yearns to restore the past as it was, the second âdoes not shy away from the contradictions of modernityâ (Boym 2001: xviii), and âpoints to the futureâ (Boym 2001: 55); they frequently shade into each other, as we shall see. If we have retained the metaphor of the circle, it is not because we think that the French film musical can only be defined in relation to the Hollywood variant, but because the centre of that circle is not âHollywoodâ but more often than not a return to a range of pasts, only one of which is the Hollywood film musical. The circumference, constituted by a wide range of sub-genres or types, appears to be drawn towards a fantasized and homogenous past, but is immediately referred back to that circumference and the heterogeneity that constitutes it. Paradoxically then, the French film musical un-constitutes itself at the same time that it constitutes itself, often with relatively short-lived sub-genres, such as the chase film, the big-band film, the popular tenor spectacular. In that respect, it demonstrates nostalgia for past forms while also demonstrating a repositioning and evolution of musical forms as they take account of sociocultural and technological developments, such as the rise of television, or industrial developments, such as the increasing hybridization of genres in the contemporary period.
In this introduction, we will consider the transition to sound and the way that musical forms were incorporated in film, the emergence of the film musical genre as a recognizable category, and an indication of what we consider to be the development of the genreâs history.
René Clair and the emergence of the film musical
The first French talkie was Les Trois Masques (AndrĂ© Hugon), released on 1 November 1929. The first film musical was released only a few weeks later, on 24 January 1930. This was La route est belle (Robert Florey, 1930), best known for its title song, sung by the filmâs star AndrĂ© BaugĂ©, who plays a poor singer substituting for a famous tenor and achieving fame as a result. These two films were made in the UK, as the French studios were not equipped for sound. RenĂ© Clairâs better-known Sous les toits de Paris was made in France in the Ăpinay studios and released three months later on 28 April 1930. In it, Albert PrĂ©jean plays a street singer who is in love with the same woman as his friend. These two early film musicals exemplify one of the more interesting tensions in the genreâs history, that between performances by singers and performances by actors. BaugĂ© was a well-known singer of opera and, in the later 1920s, operetta; PrĂ©jean was a film actor who had begun his film career in the early 1920s. Moreover, whereas Hugonâs film is now remembered only for the title song, Clairâs film is seen as an auteur film, helped in part by Clairâs own perception of his work; he preferred to call himself âauteurâ rather than âmetteur en scĂšneâ or director (Clair 1928: 3). Clairâs four films of the early 1930s â Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million (1931), Ă nous la libertĂ© (1931), Quatorze juillet (1933) â strike us now as considerably more inventive in their use of sound and music than most films of the period. But as we shall see in the first chapters of this book, in some respects they were not much different from many other musicals of the early 1930s, as filmmakers experimented with the new medium. As John Kobal points out: âBetween 1929 and 1931 European writers and directors went farther in the exploration of sound than did the Americans, who were limited by an enormous public and by producers who wanted to make good their publicity slogan: âA one hundred per cent talking motion picture!ââ (1971: 72). Nonetheless, by the 1950s Clair was seen as a major filmmaker, as evidenced by the appearance of what was to be a long list of academic works in both French and English devoted to him.1 His status as an auteur was consecrated by his admission to the AcadĂ©mie Française in 1960, with the director of the CinĂ©mathĂšqu...