Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture - Softcover

"Andrew and Ungar have written a diverse, disparate, protean book that is well worth heeding... A judicious and often elegant original work of broad scope and great ambition." - Eugen Weber, Modernism/modernity "No one committed to cultural history can ignore this book and its powerful and persuasive methodology. This is interdisciplinary work at its very best." - N. R. Fitch, Choice "Andrew and Ungar's book... is rich, complex, and frequently rewarding... This is a valuable and fascinating book, particularly in its insightful readings of a broad array of films of the 1930s." - Thomas Kselman, American Historical Review"

The story of Paris in the 1930s seems straightforward enough, with the Popular Front movement leading toward the inspiring 1936 election of a leftist coalition government. The socialist victory, which resulted in fundamental improvements in the lives of workers, was then derailed in a precipitous descent that culminated in France's capitulation before the Nazis in June 1940. Yet no matter how minutely recounted, this "straight story" clarifies only the political activity behind which turbulent cultural currents brought about far-reaching changes in everyday life and the way it is represented. In this book, Dudley Andrew and Steven Ungar apply an evocative "poetics of culture" to capture the complex atmospherics of Paris in the 1930s. They highlight the new symbolic forces put in play by technologies of the illustrated press and the sound film-technologies that converged with efforts among writers (Gide, Malraux, Celine), artists (Renoir, Dali), and other intellectuals (Mounier, de Rougemont, Leiris) to respond to the decade's crises. Their analysis takes them to expositions and music halls, to upscale architecture and fashion sites, to traditional neighborhoods, and to overseas territories, the latter portrayed in metropolitan exhibits and colonial cinema. Rather than a straight story of the Popular Front, they have produced something closer to the format of an illustrated newspaper whose multiple columns represent the breadth of urban life during this critical decade at the end of the Third French Republic.