Cracking Gilles Deleuze’s Crystal

Barry Nevin is Assistant Lecturer in French at the Dublin Institute of Technology and Teaching Visitor in Film Studies at Trinity College Dublin. His research focuses on French cinema of the 1930s, particularly the films of Jean Renoir, Jacques Feyder and Marcel Carné. His work has been published in a wide range of academic journals including Studies in French Cinema, French Cultural Studies and the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies.

• AcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroductionTheorising Renoir’s narrative style: Bazin, Faulkner, and Braudy. The future beyond the point de fuite: opening the image-temps to spaceOpen spaces / open futures: filming spatial politics Reading Deleuze on Renoir: critical opinionsDiscursive positioning: Renoir auteurChapter 1 – Teatro Mundi: Framing Urban Dynamics in Renoir’s ParisIntroduction: Renoir, cinema and the cityLa Chienne (1931)Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932)La Règle du jeu (1939)Conclusion: Renoir’s Ville-conceptChapter 2 – From Desert to Dreamscape: Viewing Renoir’s Rural Landscapes as Spatial ArenasIntroduction: opening the natural landscape to space-time Le Bled (1929)The Southerner (1945)The River (1951)Conclusion: dynamising the natural landscapeChapter 3 – Portraying the Future(s) of the Front PopulaireIntroduction: theory and texts in contextLe Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936)Les Bas-fonds (1936)La Grande Illusion (1937)Conclusion: ‘We are dancing on a volcano’. Chapter 4 – Renoir’s Crises Anti-réalistes: Framing le Temps GeléIntroduction: seeing time in the image planeDiary of a Chambermaid (1946)The Golden Coach (1952)Eléna et les hommes (1956)Conclusion: society and spectacleConclusionBibliography Appendix: Corpus Breakdown

Barry Nevin has written a compelling book that should inspire readers to (re)turn to Renoir. He fortifies his arguments with brand new research from the Renoir archives at UCLA, while also showing a wonderful interpretive eye. Indeed, his analysis of the periscope in Eléna et les hommes is just one of many moments that has changed the way I look at the film in question (p. 166). And if a work of film-philosophy can change the films it has made you watch, it is truly film-philosophy worthy of the name.