Gender and Space in Post- Colonial French and Algerian Cinema

246 Pages·2014·2.14 MB·English

Gender and Space in Post-
Colonial French and
Algerian Cinema

Mani Sharpe
Thesis for the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy
In the School of Modern Languages, Newcastle
University
Submitted March 2014

i
Acknowledgements

Firstly, I would like to thank the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle
University, whose financial support for the first three years of this project made it
possible, and Guy Austin and Sarah Leahy, for their constructive criticism, guidance,
unfaltering intelligence and astute feedback. This praise also extends to Kathryn
Robson, who provided excellent supervision for a number of months of this project.
Within this School of Modern Languages, I would like to thank Gary Jenkins
for his help organising our Film Factory workshops and Screening Atrocity
conference, Tom Watson, for offering a number of insightful remarks regarding a
number of papers I gave during the writing of this thesis, and Alex Adams both for his
enduring patience during Screening Atrocity and priceless grammatical support during
the very final stages of my PhD. Specific gratitude must also be extended to a number
of people who were involved in the Film Factory workshops, including Johnny
Walker, Katherine Farrimond. Eugenie Johnson, Joe Barton, David Spittle and Chris
Baumann; and Screening Atrocity, Beate Muller, Iain Biddle and Maxim Silverman. I
also thank Franck Michel and Jean-Christophe Penet for continuing to provide me
with teaching work in the final year of my studies. Outside of Newcastle, my thanks
extends to Claire Mcleod, Kaya Davis Hayon, Pauline Moret and Maria Flood, who
provided encouragement and practical advice in the final few weeks of my project.
Finally, I want to thank my friends, Amelia Read, Craig Wells, Jonathan Kearney,
Sebastian Saffari, Ed Eyre and Natasha Powick, for not talking about my thesis, and,
my family, who I always have time for.

ii
Abstract

This thesis explores representations of narrative space and gender in 1960s French
and Algerian cinema; an era marked, in both countries, by the spectre of the Algerian
War of Independence (1954-1962). Until now, the two forms of cinema which arose
out of this war have rarely been analysed in relation to each other. Doing so provides
a crucial insight into how the dynamics of decolonization led to analogous patterns of
cinematic representation- particularly in relation to patterns of gender and space.
This thesis will be split into four chapters. In the first chapter, I provide a
general overview of my methodological approach, the specific theorists that have
informed my research, and a socio-cultural overview of the period focusing in
particular on issues of space and gender. The second chapter will then shift to textual
analysis, illustrating how a number of French films of the period, including Adieu
Philippine (Rozier 1962), La Belle vie (Enrico 1963), Muriel ou le temps d’un retour
(Resnais 1963), and Le Boucher (Chabrol 1969), critique a post-colonial
modernization drive predicated upon neo-colonial processes of spatial marginalization
in representing the domestic sphere as ‘contaminated’ by the figure of a traumatised
appelé. In this respect, patterns of narrative space will shown to be intrinsically
intertwined with the politics of anti-colonial resistance. In the second half of this
chapter, I will show how this desire to critique colonialism coexists with a gendered
conservatism which elides or in some cases completely ignores the feminist agenda
pursued by women (and men) during the 1960s. The third chapter will then discuss
how the attainment of national sovereignty impacted upon Algerian cinema of the
period. Within this framework, I will firstly show how La Bataille d’Alger
(Pontecorvo 1966), Le Vent des Aurès (Lakhdar-Hamina 1966) and L’Opium et le
bâton (Rachedi 1969) use representations of spatial transgression (from the private to
the public realm) as a signifier for anti-colonial resistance. Nevertheless- as with the
French films of the era- I will then draw attention to the ways in which these films
draw from a constellation of retrograde gendered ideals in their depiction of the
Revolution. The fourth chapter will then explore the few films which do not fit into
this taxonomy, instead using patterns of narrative space in order to critique patriarchal
ideology. In this section, I will explore films including Cléo de 5 à 7 (Varda 1962),
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Elise ou la vraie vie (Drach 1970), La Bataille d’Alger (Pontecorvo 1966), and La
Nouba des Femmes du Mont Chenoua (Djebar 1978).
In focusing primarily upon the politics of representation, I believe that this
project will facilitate a crucial methodological shift, from the largely ahistorical and
apolitical approaches which have previously dominated critical discourse on this
period, to an approach instead rooted in the socio-cultural and political reality of the
era.

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Contents

Title page i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
Contents v
List of Figures viii

Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1. Introduction 1

1.1.2 From dichotomy to dialogue 1
1.1.3 Specific limitations in existing scholarship 5
1.1.4 Advantages of focusing upon representations of narrative space and
gender 7
1.1.5 Corpus 12
1.1.6 Methodology 15
1.1.7 Structure 16

1.2 Literature Review 17

1.2.1 Gender 21
1.2.2 Space 32

1.3 Historical Contextualization 42

1.3.1 Gender: masculine resistance and female domesticity 42
1.3.2 Space: migration and reprivatisation 49
1.3.3 Summary 54

Chapter 2. French Cinema

2.1 Narrative space in French cinema 55

2.1.1 Adieu Philippine: Dédé, the (domestic) silent witness 55

2.1.2 La Belle vie: undermining the domestic ideal 59

2.1.3 Muriel ou le temps d’un retour: contaminating the domestic realm 66

2.1.4 Le Boucher: violent domestic penetration 73

2.1.5 Conclusion 80

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2.2 Conservative Sexual Politics in French Cinema 82

2.2.1 Adieu Philippine 83
Women: derision and the domestic 83
Men: machismo, independence, martyrdom 87

2.2.2 La Belle vie 92
Women: epistemological deprivation and the ‘containment’
of female sexuality 92
Men: from emasculated anti-hero to patriarchal ideal 97

2.2.3 Muriel ou le temps d’un retour 101
Women: alienation and dependency 101
Men: the violent search for masculine identity 108

2.2.4 Le Boucher 112
Women: from maternal frigidity to sexual perversion 113
Men: masculinity in crisis 117

2.2.5 Conclusion 122

Chapter 3. Algerian Cinema

3.1 Narrative Space in Algerian Cinema 124

3.1.1 The significance of space in post-colonial Algerian culture 124

3.1.2 Le Vent des Aurès 125
Influence: Soviet cinema and colonial discourse 126
From private (domestic) to public space 129

3.1.3 Les Hors-la-loi 131
Influence: the classic Western and Berber culture 132
From bled el makhzen to bled es siba 135

3.1.4 L’Opium et le bâton 138
Influence: literary realism, Soviet cinema and Hollywood spectacle 138
From urban to (revolutionary) rural space 140

3.1.5 Conclusion 142

3.2 Conservative Sexual Politics in Algerian Cinema 143

3.2.1 Le Vent des Aurès 143
Men: ‘absent’ fathers and le fils-avant-tout 143
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Women: la mère-avant-tout 145

3.2.2 Les Hors-la-loi 149
Men: the ethics and aesthetics of le nif 149
Women: hurma-haram and la femme fatale 152

3.2.3 L’Opium et le bâton 156
Men: myth, martyrdom and the Fanonian ‘New Man’ 156
Women: victimization, maternity and mourning 163

3.2.4 Conclusion 165

Chapter 4. Challenging Patriarchal Ideology Through Patterns of
Narrative Space

4.1 French Cinema 167

4.1.1 Cléo de 5 à 7: occupying the street 167

4.1.2 Elise ou la vraie vie: occupying the factory line 178

4.2 Algerian Cinema 186

4.2.1 La Bataille d’Alger: transgressing the colonial city 186

4.2.2 La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua: transgressing the threshold 193

4.2.3 Conclusion 200

Conclusion

5.1 Conclusion 202

Bibliography 208
Filmography 223

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List of Figures

Figure 1. Fragile domestic harmony in Enrico’s La Belle vie (1963) 64

Figure 2. Disrupted domesticity in Resnais’s Muriel (1963) 71

Figure 3. Liliane and Juliette as archetypal ‘gamines’ in Rozier’s Adieu Philippine
(1962) 85

Figure 4. Maternal frigidity and masculine impotence in Chabrol’s
Le Boucher (1969) 114

Figure 5. Masculine imprisonment and escape in Farès’s Les Hors-la-loi
(1969) 134

Figure 6. Veiled female suffering in Lakhdar-Hamina’s Le Vent des Aurès
(1966) 146

Figure 7. Inhabiting the (masculine) space of the street in Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7
(1962) 175

Figure 8. Urban margins in Drach’s Elise ou la vraie vie (1970) 181

Figure 9. Female urban resistance in Pontecorvo’s La Bataille d’Alger (1966) 190

Figure 10. Domestic symbolic violence in Djebar’s La Nouba des femmes du Mont
Chenoua (1978) 194

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Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1. Introduction

1.1.2 From dichotomy to dialogue

It is not an exaggeration to claim that the two forms of cinema that emerged in France
and Algeria in the years of decolonization have rarely been discussed together.1 As
regards scholarship on French cinema of the period, French critics have generally
tended to focus almost exclusively upon what has retrospectively been labelled the New
Wave (1958-1962),2 that is a group of films which attempted to break with cinematic
conventions through an ‘improvisational (unscripted) aesthetic’ and unmannered
cinematographic and editing style (Cook 1985: 40). A huge corpus of works has been
dedicated to exploring the impact of the New Wave on France’s social and cinematic
history (see, for example, early commentaries on the movement that appeared in the
journals Cahiers du cinéma and Positif, alongside more recent works, Monaco 1977; de
Baecque 2003; Neupert 2003). It is notable, however, that this scholarship rarely
attempts to discuss the relationship between 1960s’ French cinema and other non-
western national cinemas that emerged during this period. One of the original aspects of
this thesis is thus that it aims precisely to widen this Eurocentric paradigm. By contrast,
little has been written on the form of Algerian cinema that emerged in the years of
decolonization. One might find this surprising, given the radical overhaul of cinematic
expression that took place during this period, when colonial discourse (including
cinema) was abruptly superseded by a national culture (and cinema) founded upon a
process of revolutionary self-representation rather than a long genealogy of Orientalist
and colonial stereotypes (notably the phantasmagoric universe of the harem [see Alloula
1986]). Crucially, the few works that have attempted to analyse post-colonial Algerian
films (notably Maherzi 1980; Austin 2012), remain similarly limited by the fact that
these works rarely place 1960s’ Algerian filmmaking explicitly in dialogue with other
national cinemas, especially 1960s’ French cinema. Furthermore, as with scholarship on
the New Wave, critical discourse on post-colonial Algerian filmmaking tends towards

1 The few theorists that have done so include Dine (1994), Stora (1998), and Austin (2007,
2009), although these works remain limited in scope.
2 Scholars generally identify Claude Chabrol’s 1958 film, Le Beau Serge as the first New Wave
film, whilst by 1962, most critics were lamenting the death of the movement (Sellier 2008: 2).
Valerie Orpen has also argued that the New Wave began much earlier, with Agnès Varda’s
1955 film, La Pointe courte (2007).
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conceptualising the period in homogenous, monolithic terms. Cinematic works made
during this era are often classed under the totalizing rubric of cinéma moudjahid
(freedom-fighter cinema), rather than analysing the complex and often contradictory
constellation of formal techniques, cultural intertexts and iconographic patterns
involved in the production of these films, not all of which depict explicit acts of conflict
per se. In this respect, both French and Algerian film scholarship remains limited in
conceiving decolonization, the point of rupture, in terms of a cultural splitting or
dichotomy, rather than an on-going dialogue.
The reasons for this critical dichotomy are complex. On the French side, it is
important to note that, from its inception, the New Wave has essentially dominated
academic discourses on French film history, creating an ‘aesthetic doxa’ (Sellier 2008:
1), by which many other forms of cinema (domestic or foreign) were measured and
often eclipsed. This observation is, of course, applicable to the so-called tradition de
qualité3 (which the French director François Truffaut defined condescendingly as ‘le
cinéma de papa’ [1954]), but it is also evident in the ways in which critical discourse on
the period appears to define 1960s’ French cinema under the totalising rubric of ‘the
New Wave’, when, in reality, this period was made up of a variety of different
cinematic forms, including the work of the comparatively Leftist, Left Bank (Varda,
Marker, Resnais [although admittedly a great deal of scholarship has been dedicated to
these directors]), comedies (de Broca), thrillers (Clément), cinéma vérité (Rouch/Morin,
Marker), the clandestine circuit of le cinéma parallèle (Vautier, Clément) and a number
of other filmmakers who did not fit squarely into such a rigid taxonomy (Demy,
Cavalier, Melville). In drawing attention to a number of works associated with the Left
Bank, le cinéma parallèle and le cinéma vérité, this thesis thus conceives of 1960s’
French cinema in heterogeneous rather than homogeneous terms. Furthermore, the
uncritical dithyrambic academic reception to the New Wave seems to have particularly
affected Maghrebi cinema, which was, by analogy, dismissed as France’s distant and
outmoded ‘Other’. This observation is particularly evident in Serge Daney’s derisive
description of Algerian cinema as ‘post-cinéma soviétique avec les cinéastes
moudjahidins devenus les notables du cinéma d’Etat’ (Daney cited in Stora 1998: 253).
In this respect, critical discourses of the period can thus be seen to have been complicit
within the ways in which, during the years of decolonization, France embraced
modernization as a way of distancing itself from a colonial past deemed increasingly

3 The term la tradition de qualité refers to a tendency in post-war French cinema to rely on
‘literary screenplays, historical reconstruction and historical or nationalist subjects’ (Austin
2008: 11; see also Cook 1999: 442).
2