Intermedial Dialogues. The French New Wave and Other Arts

Casting fresh light on one of the most important movements in film history, Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts is the first comprehensive study of the New Wave´s relationship with the older arts. Traversing the fields of literature, theatre, painting, architecture and photography, and drawing on André Bazin alongside recent theories of intermediality, it investigates the ´impure´, intermedial aesthetics of New Wave cinema. Filmmakers under discussion include critics-turned-directors François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, members of the Left Bank Group Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Chris Marker, but also lesser-known directors, notably the ´secret child of the New Wave´, Guy Gilles. This wide-ranging book offers an original reading of the complex, often ambivalent ways in which the New Wave engages the other arts in both its discursive construction and filmic practice.