The banlieue in French cinema of the 1930s

Abstract

This article looks at representations of the banlieue in the cinema of the 1930s – a period before the term banlieue was synonymous with deprivation and violence as, especially since Matthieu Kassowitz’s 1995 film La Haine, it has subsequently tended to become. The work of Claude Autant-Lara and Maurice Lehmann (Fric-Frac, Circonstances atténuantes) and that of Anatole Litvak (Cœur de Lilas) receive close attention along with two more widely known films, Marcel Carné’s tragic Le Jour se lève, whose banlieue is topographically unsituated but could well be Parisian, and Jean Renoir’s Partie de campagne where the countryside near Paris provides the setting for two bucolic idylls that offer a different, less grim view of the banlieue than that nowadays current.