Cinéma du look () was a French film movement of the 1980s and 1990s, analysed, for the first time, by French critic Raphaël Bassan in La Revue du Cinéma issue no. 449, May 1989,Translated into English: "The French Neo-baroques Directors: Beineix, Besson, Carax from Diva to le Grand Bleu" (pp. 11–23), in The Films of Luc Besson: Master of Spectacle (Under the direction of Susan Hayward and Phil Powrie) Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. in which he classified Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax as directors of the "look".
Style and origins These directors were said to favor style over substance, spectacle over narrative.Austin, Guy. Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction, Manchester University Press, 1999, pp. 119–120, 126-128. It referred to films that had a slick, gorgeous visual style and a focus on young, alienated characters10 Essential Films For An Introduction To Cinema du Look — Taste of Cinema who were said to represent the marginalized youth of François Mitterrand's (1981-1995) France.French Cinema in the 1980s - Google Books (pg.109) Themes that run through many of their films include doomed love affairs, young people more affiliated to peer groups than families, a cynical view of the police, and the use of scenes in the Paris Métro to symbolise an alternative, underground society. The mixture of 'high' culture, such as the opera music of Diva and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, and pop culture, for example the references to Batman in Subway, was another key feature.
A parallel can be drawn between these French filmmakers' productions and New Hollywood films including most notably Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart (1981) and Rumble Fish (1983), Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Lola (1981), as well as television commercials, music videos and the television series Miami Vice.French National Cinema - Google Books (pg.244) The term was first defined by Raphael Bassan in La Revue De Cinema as an insult.They've Got the Look–and the Beat|The Current|The Criterion Collection
Key directors and key films
Jean-Jacques Beineix Diva (1981)DIVA (1981) — Blu-ray Review — ZekeFilmJean-Jacques Beineix obituary|Movies|The Guardian The Moon in the Gutter (1983) 37°2 le matin (English: Betty Blue) (1986)Betty Blue: The Look of Love|Current|The Criterion Collection
Luc Besson Subway (1985) Le Grand bleu (English: The Big Blue) (1988)Look Again: A Celebration of Cinema Du Look on Vimeo Nikita (1990)
Leos Carax Boy Meets Girl (1984) Mauvais Sang (1986) Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991)
See also Vulgar auteurism MTV Neo-noir Postmodern film and television Auteur theory
References
Bibliography
External links "Window Shopping"? -- Aesthetics of the Spectacular and Cinéma du Look by Patricia Allmer, Loughborough University, 2004 Nikita and The Assassin: Hollywood vs. European Cinema by Will da Shaman, Netribution Film Network, 2000 Guy Austin, Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction, A Review by J. Emmett Winn, see Austin pages 5 and 6 Essays on Luc Besson : Master of Spectacle (review) by William Brown, 2009 The Cinéma du look and fantasy films by Guy Austin, in Contemporary French Cinema, Manchester University Press, 1996, p. 119 Diva, Jean-Jacques Beineix in The Cinema of France, by Phil Powrie, p. 154, Wallflower Press, 2006 Luc Besson : The Cinema du Look or the Spectacle-Image in Cinema after Deleuze by Richard Ruston, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012, p. 132