Alain Robbe-Grillet

By (author) John Phillips

Publication date:

01 June 2011

Length of book:

176 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

198x129mm

ISBN-13: 9780719077371

Placing Robbe-Grillet’s filmic oeuvre in the related contexts of both his novelistic work and the different historical and cultural periods in which his films were made, from the early 1960s to the present, the book traces lines of influence and continuity throughout his work, which is shown to exhibit a consistent preoccupation with an identifiable body of themes, motifs and structures. Close readings of all the films are skilfully combined with a thematic approach, ranging across the entire filmic corpus. The book also contains chapters on cinematography and technique.

Ultimately, this lucid, comprehensive and fascinating study shows Robbe-Grillet’s contribution to the evolution of the cinematic art both in France and internationally to have been considerably more important than previously acknowledged.

List of Plates
Series Editors’ Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Birth of a film-maker: L’Année dernière à Marienbad
2. Sight and sound: harmony in counterpoint?
3. Homo ludens: L’Homme qui ment, L’Eden et après, N a pris les dés, Le Jeu avec le feu, Un Bruit qui rend fou
4. Beginnings and endings: orientalism and the erotic in L’Immortelle and C’est Gradiva Qui Vous Appelle
5. Sado-eroticism: Trans-Europ-Express, L’Eden et après, and Glissements progressifs du plaisir
6. Fetishism and control: La Belle Captive
Conclusion
Filmography
Select Bibliography
Index

"This timely and extremely well-researched study persuasively contends that Alain Robbe-Grillet's somewhat neglected filmic oeuvre has made a much more substantial contribution to the evolution of French cinema than has hitherto been acknowledged, and attempts to rehabilitate his reputation as an innovative avant-gardist film-maker who has expanded the language of contemporary cinema.", Edmund J. Smyth, Manchester Metropolitan University, French Studies, 1 October 2012|This overdue study makes for an erudite introduction and thoroughly explanatory 'user guide' to its slightly forbidding subject.

Philips' study broadly revolves around the psychological, plastic and self-reflexive qualities of Robbe-Grillet's films., Jonathan L. Owen, University of St. Andrews, An Online Journal of Television Studies, Issue 24, 1 October 2012