1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910816780203321

Autore

Conway Kelley <1963->

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2004

ISBN

9786612763182

0-520-93857-7

1-282-76318-0

1-59734-527-X

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (277 p.)

Disciplina

782.42164/082/0944

Soggetti

Popular music - France - History and criticism

Motion picture music - France - History and criticism

Women singers - France

Motion pictures - France - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes filmography (p. 185), bibliographical references (p. 223-230), and index.

Nota di contenuto

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.

Sommario/riassunto

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 1930's 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.