TITLE: “French Impressionism and the Mainstream: Reading Avant-Garde Ambivalence in Abel Gance’s J’accuse (1919)”

ABSTRACT: This article links the French Impressionist movement with France’s interwar project of revitalizing film culture through the production of a distinct national cinema. French Impressionist filmmakers, who often oscillated between independent and mainstream channels, infused mainstream French films with their theoretical and stylistic tenets while also defining their aims against the “uncinematic” mainstream. Examining the relationship between the mainstream and French Impressionism during this period, this paper analyzes the often-contradictory aesthetic and social attitudes present in French Impressionism and foregrounds the importance of historical and industrial context in the meaning of film texts.

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