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Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Elizabeth Ezra
Series: Contemporary Film Directors
Copyright Date: 2008
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Pages: 176
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1xcqxh
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  • Book Info
    Jean-Pierre Jeunet
    Book Description:

    This is the first book on Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the popular and critically acclaimed director of films such as Amelie, Delicatessen, A Very Long Engagement, Alien Resurrection, and City of Lost Children. Jeunet's work exemplifies Europe's engagement with Hollywood, while at the same time making him a figurehead of the critically overlooked, specifically French tradition of the cinema of the fantastic._x000B__x000B_Having garnered both commercial success and critical esteem in genres such as science fiction, fantasy, romantic comedy, and the war epic, Jeunet's work nevertheless engages with key aspects of French history and contemporary French culture. This study analyzes the director's major films, including those he made with Marc Caro, and his early short works. Elizabeth Ezra brings a new perspective to the study of Jeunet's work, uncovering instances of repressed historical trauma involving France's role in Algeria and the Second World War. The book includes a commentary by Jeunet himself on his career and corpus of films._x000B_

    eISBN: 978-0-252-09115-5
    Subjects: Film Studies

Table of Contents

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  1. Front Matter
    (pp. i-viii)
  2. Table of Contents
    (pp. ix-x)
  3. Preface and Acknowledgments
    (pp. xi-xii)
  4. Prosthetic Visions
    (pp. 1-130)

    Jean-Pierre Jeunet is that rare breed, a popular auteur. He has written or cowritten all but one of the screenplays for the films he has directed and has maintained a high degree of creative control over his projects, which bear his distinctive stylistic stamp and have been generally well regarded by critics. At the same time, his films have attracted increasingly large audiences, with accordingly expanding budgets. Yet his success is also his Achilles’ heel: his popularity with audiences has tended to marginalize him among film scholars and academics, some of whom regard his films with suspicion. Critics have dismissed...

  5. Commentary by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
    (pp. 131-142)

    This commentary, in which Jeunet spoke directly to the camera about his career and a variety of other subjects, was filmed for the television programAuto/Focus,which first aired in France on November 23, 2005, on France 4 (production KM; concept: Thinkfactory/Alexandre Drubigny; directed by Alexandre Drubigny). Translated from the French by Elizabeth Ezra.

    (OnOnce upon a Time in the West;dir. Sergio Leone, 1969): I see myself at the age of seventeen in a cinema in Sable d’Olonne, and I’m sitting there, and it’s killing me just watching a scene, seeing that camera movement. I realized then just...

  6. Filmography
    (pp. 143-148)
  7. Bibliography
    (pp. 149-154)
  8. Index
    (pp. 155-160)
  9. Back Matter
    (pp. 161-164)