Brigitte Rollet

Girls will be girls… or won’t they? Jacqueline Audry’s Young Heroines in Post-War French Cinema

Jacqueline Audry (1908-1977), one of only two French female directors of the post-war period, was also the first filmmaker to choose young girls as protagonists for her multiple adaptations of well-known literary classics. Her originality stems from the creation of modern heroines from female bildungsroman by authors such as the Comtesse de Ségur, Colette and Dorothy Bussy. This article examines constructions of girlhood from 1869 to the Belle Époque, concentrating on the characters of Sophie, Gigi and Olivia, who appeared on the French screen between 1946 and 1951. My analysis concentrates on the various ways and devices used by Audry to convey transgressive messages about women’s sexuality and gender politics in a still conservative France, despite the publication of Le Deuxième sexe in 1949. ________________________

Ecrire l'amour sans nom: Peut‐on être juge et partie?

Bonnet, M.‐J., Les Relations amoureuses entre les femmes du XVIe au XXe siecle (Odile Jacob, 1995), 416 pp., 75F., ISBN 2 7381 0319 7 Martel, F., Le Rose et le noir. Les homosexuels en France depuis 1968 (Seuil, 1996), 449 pp., 140F., ISBN 2 02 02189 1

Images de France et d'ailleurs

Forbes, J., The cinema in France after the New Wave (The Macmillan Press, 1992), 337pp., £10.99., ISBN 0 333 41430 6 Sorlin, P., European Cinemas, European Societies 1939–1990 (Routledge, 1991), 247pp., £11.99., ISBN 0 415 05671 3 Dyer, R., Vincendeau, G., Popular European Cinema (Routledge, 1992), 272pp., £11.99., ISBN 0 415 06803 7