Miraculous Realism

Niels Niessen

Description

At the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, two movies from northern-Francophone Europe swept almost all the main awards. Rosetta by the Walloon directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne won the Golden Palm, and L'humanité by the French director Bruno Dumont won the Grand Prize; both won acting awards as well. Taking this "miracle" of Cannes as the point of departure, Niels Niessen identifies a transregional film movement in the French-Belgian border region—the Cinéma du Nord or "cinema of the North." He examines this movement within the contexts of French and Belgian national cinemas from the silent era to the digital age, as well as that of the new realist tendency in world cinema of the last three decades. In addition, he traces, from a northern perspective, a secular-religious tradition in Francophone-European film and philosophy from Bresson and Pialat, via Bazin, Deleuze, and Godard, to the Dardennes and Dumont, while critiquing this tradition for its frequent use of a humanist vocabulary of grace for a secular world. Once a cradle of the Industrial Revolution, the Franco-Belgian Nord faced economic crisis for most of the twentieth century. Miraculous Realism demonstrates that the Cinéma du Nord's rise to prominence resulted from the region's endeavor to reinvent itself economically and culturally at the crossroads of Europe after decades of recession.
Contents
List of Illustrations

A North Wind, or The Miracle of Cannes 1999

Introduction: A Critical Fairy Tale

1 Hunting for Easter Eggs in Rosetta and L'humanité
A Normal Life | humanity with a small h | The Acting/
Acted Body | Of Little Flies and Burned-Out Priests |
a north wind | Game Over, or The Moral of the Story

2 Coal-Fired Dreams, the Cinéma du Nord
The Nord | From Pays Noir to Euroregion | Between
Utopia and Dystopia: Wallonia in the Cinema | Not Paris:
Nord-Pas-de-Calais in the Cinema | Conclusion | Of
Giants, Angels, and Humans

3 Cinéma du Nord, a Euregional Cinema
Transnational Coproduction | Argument | Terre d'Images:
Northern French Cinema within French National Cinema |
Yes We Cannes: Francophone-Belgian Cinema in Its Walloon
Manifestation | At the Crossroads of Europe | Google,
Van Gogh, the Louvre-Lens, and a Terril of Coats
Excursion: From the Nord, with Love

4 New Realism after the Modern Cinema
What Is Realism? | Neorealism | From Neo to New:
Miraculous Realism | The Modern Cinema | The Acting/
Acted Image| The Question of Grace in Francophone
European Film Philosophy

Epilogue: Posthumanism

Acknowledgments

Notes

Films Referenced

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Film
• Cinema
• History of film
• History of Europe
• Western Europe
• Visual culture
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781438477350
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Miraculous Realism

Miraculous Realism
The French-Walloon Cinéma du Nord

Niels Niessen
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Niessen, Niels, 1980– author.
Title: Miraculous realism : the French-Walloon cinéma du Nord / Niels Niessen.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] | Series: SUNY series, horizons of cinema | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019036256 | ISBN 9781438477336 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438477350 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Borderlands in motion pictures. | Rosetta (Motion picture) | Humanité (Motion picture) | Nord-Pas-de-Calais (France)—In motion pictures. | Wallonia (Belgium)—In motion pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.B67 N54 2020 | DDC 791.43/658—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036256
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents
Ce n’est pas tant la Belgique ou la France qui ont gagné cette année à Cannes, que ce Nord rugueux et fier qui produit bon an mal an un cinéma régional dont la principale vertu est de veiller à maintenir une certaine flamme, ou à entretenir une vraie colère. (Not so much Belgium or France have won this year at Cannes, but this rough and proud Nord that with ups and downs produces a regional cinema, whose main virtue is to maintain a certain flame, or to entertain a true anger.)
—Serge Toubiana, “Le Cinéma retrouvé”
This is a fable, slightly wistful perhaps, but quietly optimistic within its poetic framework. If I might be allowed to give it such a name. Men and angels are to be found here, living on good terms together.
—Vittorio de Sica, “How I Direct My Films,” preface to the English-language edition of the screenplay of Miracle in Milan
Contents
List of Illustrations
A North Wind, or The Miracle of Cannes 1999
Introduction: A Critical Fairy Tale
1 Hunting for Easter Eggs in Rosetta and L’humanité
A Normal Life , | humanity with a small h , | The Acting/Acted Body , | Of Little Flies and Burned-Out Priests , | a north wind , | Game Over, or The Moral of the Story ,
2 Coal-Fired Dreams, the Cinéma du Nord
The Nord , | From Pays Noir to Euroregion , | Between Utopia and Dystopia: Wallonia in the Cinema , | Not Paris: Nord-Pas-de-Calais in the Cinema , | Conclusion , | Of Giants, Angels, and Humans ,
3 Cinéma du Nord, a Euregional Cinema
Transnational Coproduction , | Argument , | Terre d’Images : Northern French Cinema within French National Cinema , | Yes We Cannes : Francophone-Belgian Cinema in Its Walloon Manifestation , | At the Crossroads of Europe , | Google, Van Gogh, the Louvre-Lens, and a Terril of Coats ,
Excursion: From the Nord, with Love
4 New Realism after the Modern Cinema
What Is Realism? , | Neorealism , | From Neo to New: Miraculous Realism , | The Modern Cinema , | The Acting/Acted Image , | The Question of Grace in Francophone European Film Philosophy ,
Epilogue: Posthumanism
Acknowledgments
Notes
Films Referenced
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Figures
0.1 Front page of La Voix du Nord , May 25, 1999.
I.1 Rosetta.
I.2 L’humanité.
I.3 Caché.
I.4 The Matrix.
1.1–1.3 The opening scene of Rosetta .
1.4 Through a wooden gate she’s not supposed to use.
1.5 Rosetta, carrying a heavy plastic bag, once again finds her way through the woods.
1.6–1.8 The opening scene of L’humanité .
1.9 L’humanité in reference to Georges Braque’s Landscape with Plow .
1.10 Pharaon eating an apple in reference to René Magritte’s La Chambre d’Ecoute .
1.11 One time, though, the camera catches Rosetta masturbating, perhaps.
1.12 A north wind creeping underneath the trailer window.
1.13 Rosetta holds the hair dryer just like a medic performing an ultrasound scan.
1.14 From the promotional trailer Jean-Luc Godard made for Bresson’s Mouchette .
1.15 Mouchette .
1.16 Sous le soleil de Satan .
1.17 Journal d’un curé de campagne .
1.18 Rosetta bumps into the young woman whose job she has just been given.
1.19 The only thing Rosetta symbolically gives birth to is the hard-boiled egg.
1.20 Rosetta looks offscreen at her savior.
1.21 Pharaon looks offscreen at the diffuse white light.
1.22 Pharaon floating in the void.
2.1 The Rosetta Plan.
2.2 Ch’ti beer on display in the museum shop of the Louvre-Lens.
2.3 Official and unofficial language communities in Belgium and Nord-Pas-de-Calais.
2.4 Acquisition of territory by France along its northern frontier.
2.5 Geology of the French-Belgian border region.
2.6 Distribution of urban settlements in the French-Belgian border region.
2.7 Vincent van Gogh, The Potato Eaters .
2.8 Lust for Life .
2.9 Van Gogh (Kirk Douglas) in a coal mine.
2.10 “Every now and then …”
2.11 Misère au Borinage .
2.12 Workers parading with a portrait of Karl Marx.
2.13 The contradictions inherent to capitalism.
2.14 The Lille-Europe railway station as seen in L’humanité .
2.15 Pharaon waiting for the Eurostar to London.
2.16 The construction of the Liège-Guillemins railway station as seen in Thierry Michel’s documentary Métamorphoses d’une gare .
2.17 Métamorphoses d’une gare .
2.18 EU funding in Nord-Pas-de-Calais.
2.19 The border-crossing metropolitan area around Lille as seen on Google Maps.
2.20 GDP per capita in 2000 in northern France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the southern Netherlands, and southwest Germany.
2.21 Unemployment rates at the end of 2004 in northern France, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
2.22 Unemployment among people under twenty-five at the end of 2004 in northern France, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
2.23–2.25 Déjà s’envole la fleur maigre .
2.26–2.28 Enfants du hasard .
2.29 Les Convoyeurs attendent .
2.30 L’Enfance nue .
2.31 Les 400 coups .
2.32 L’Enfance nue .
2.33 Les 400 coups .
2.34 Hadewijch .
2.35–2.38 With Love from Calais .
2.39–2.41 La Vie rêvée des anges .
3.1 Rosetta .
3.2 L’humanité .
3.3 Leader preceding francophone-Belgian films.
3.4 Eldorado .
3.5 Les Géants .
3.6 Les Premiers, les derniers .
3.7 Young filmmakers in francophone Belgium.
3.8 “It’s in the Nord we make TransMedia foam.”
3.9 The Van Gogh house in the Walloon town of Wasmes.
3.10 The Galérie du temps in the Louvre-Lens.
3.11 The Louvre-Lens addressing “those at a remove from culture.”
3.12–3.14 Memorial of biscuit boxes. From Christian Boltanski’s La Salle des pendus in the Musée des Arts Contemporains de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.
3.15 Terril of coats. From Christian Boltanski’s La Salle des pendus in the Musée des Arts Contemporains de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.
i–ii The Liège-Guillemins train station.
iii–iv Terril in Wasmes, Wallonia.
v–viii fleurs du terril .
ix Maison Van Gogh de Colfontaine in Wasmes.
x Brasserie Van Gogh in Boussu.
xi Maison Van Gogh in Mons.
xii Charbonnage de Frameries.
xiii Charleroi.
xiv Mons.
xv Charleroi.
xvi Marcinelle.
xvii–xviii Lens.
xix Liévin.
xx–xxii Liévin.
xxiii–xxiv Dunes de la Slack.
xxv–xxviii fleurs de la pierre
xxix–xxx Charleroi’s phantom subway.
xxxi Charleroi.
xxxii Liège.
xxxiii Borinage.
xxxiv Valenciennes.
4.1 Y’Aura-t’il de la neige à Noël?
4.2 Welcome.
4.3 Miracolo a Milano .
4.4 Still Life .
4.5 The World .
4.6–4.8 A Nos amours .
4.9 “Amor Omnia Vincit.”
4.10 “Je ne cherche pas, je trouve.”
4.11 “Si vous vous moquez de Balzac, je vous tue.”
4.12 Le Silence de Lorna .
Charts
3.1 Annual production of first and second feature-length French initiative films.
3.2 Coproductions with France in francophone-Belgian cinema, 2001–2017.
3.3 France’s main coproducing partners, 2002–2015.

A North Wind, or The Miracle of Cannes 1999
O NCE UPON A TIME IN 1999 a miracle happened at the Cannes International Film Festival, when two films from the French-Belgian border region swept almost all main awards. Rosetta by the Walloon filmmakers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne won the Palme d