Of all European cinema, the most important is French. France annually produces more films than any other European nation, and throughout its history it has been the key competitor to Hollywood; it is Cannes that matters most after the Oscars. Moreover, the study of film as an academic discipline emerged from France during the 1950s, and was shaped by the work of French intellectuals during the 1960s and 1970s. And in the broad field of international scholarship that is Film Studies, after Hollywood, there are more scholars working in French cinema than any other national cinema.

As serious research on French cinema continues to flourish, this new four-volume collection from Routledge meets the need for an authoritative anthology to enable users to navigate and make sense of the subject’s large body of scholarship, and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by Phil Powrie, Chief General Editor of the only academic journal specifically devoted to French cinema, and chair of the Association for Studies in French Cinema, this new Routledge title is a ‘mini library’ of foundational and the very best cutting-edge work. The gathered major works bring together the best and most influential writing on French cinema. Volume I engages with two different forms of scholarship: popular cinema (genres and stars) and influential conceptualizations of French cinema. Volume II adopts the more canonical–historical approach for the period up to the New Wave, assembling the best work on the silent period, the Golden Age of the 1930s and early 1940s, and the New Wave of the early 1960s. Volumes III and IV, meanwhile, focus on the post-New Wave period from the mid-1960s onwards.

The set includes an introduction to the subject, newly written by the editor, which places the gathered materials in their historical and intellectual context. Indeed, French Cinema is an essential work of reference, and is destined to be valued by scholars and advanced students as a vital research tool.