Titre du document / Document title

Film as national icon: Claude Berri's Germinal = Le film en tant qu'icône nationale : Germinal de Claude Berri

Auteur(s) / Author(s)

MURRAY Alison ⁽¹⁾ ;

Affiliation(s) du ou des auteurs / Author(s) Affiliation(s)

⁽¹⁾ University of North Carolina, Wilmington, ETATS-UNIS

Résumé / Abstract

The paper examines Claude Berri's 1993 film adaptation of Emile Zola's novel Germinal as a failed attempt to intervene in the debate about contemporary social injustice and economic inequality. In order to add to the film's authenticity and to argue for its contemporary relevance, Berri shot it in northern France and worked with a considerable number of nonprofessional actors, many of whom were miners or came from a mining background. However, by marketing the Germinal story as a national myth, and by emphasizing its memorial value, Berri in fact emptied Germinal of the subversive social and political power that was carried by the novel and thus undermined the film's potential for social criticism

Revue / Journal Title

The French review   ISSN 0016-111X 

Source / Source

2003, vol. 76, n^o5, [Note(s): 893, 906-916 [11 p.]] (27 ref.)

Langue / Language

Anglais
Revue : Français

Editeur / Publisher

American Association of Teachers of French, Carbondale, IL, ETATS-UNIS  (1927) (Revue)

Mots-clés anglais / English Keywords

Cinema ; Commitment ; Literature ; Art Criticism ; Myth ; Miner ; Social Inequality ; Sociology of culture ; Movie ; Social criticism ;

Mots-clés français / French Keywords

Zola (E.) ; Cinéma ; Engagement ; Littérature ; Critique d'art ; Mythe ; Mineur ; Inégalité sociale ; Sociologie de la culture ; Film ; Critique sociale ;

Localisation / Location

INIST-CNRS, Cote INIST : 23192, 35400011792620.0010