French Animation History is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of animation, illuminating the exceptional place France holds within that history.

• Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011
• The first book dedicated exclusively to this history
• Explores how French animators have forged their own visual styles, narrative modes, and technological innovations to construct a distinct national style, while avoiding the cliches and conventions of Hollywood's commercial cartoons
• Includes more than 80 color and black...

The French New Wave cinema is arguably the most fascinating of all film movements, famous for its exuberance, daring and avant-garde techniques. This is a fresh look at the social, economic and aesthetic mechanisms that shaped French film in the 1950s, as well as detailed studies of the most important New Wave movies of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Richard Neupert first tracks the precursors to New Wave cinema, showing how they provided blueprints for those who would follow. Jean-Pierre Melville, Alexandre Astruc, and the young Agnes Varda all offered valuable narrative lessons and cheap...