French Westerns

There are hundreds of films that could be called both “French” and “western.” Their production spans the history of filmmaking, and celebrated stars and directors have worked in the genre. However, with the exception of early silent production, these films are overlooked in studies of French cinema, of film genre, and even of the “transnational” western. French Westerns: On the Frontier of Film Genre and French Cinema is the first scholarly monograph dedicated to these films. This study advances the recovery of popular European cinema neglected by a narrow focus on “art films,” and adds new dimension to the understanding of the western genre. However, the purpose is not to stretch existing definitions of a genre or a national cinema to accommodate these films. It is to expose the acts of imagination to which the logics of “French Cinema” and “western” owe their coherence: acts that in these films fail repeatedly, productively, and at times spectacularly. The focus lies on an unresolved dissonance between the western genre and key French cinematic referents: landscapes, regional traditions, post-war modernization, language, stars, and a watershed event in political and cultural history, May 1968.