Engaging, well-researched cultural history.
Women and film in France.
Film historian Knudson looks at French cinema, with a focus on female actors, writers, and directors who shaped, and were shaped by, the artistic revolution known as the New Wave. Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Anna Karina, Anouk Aimee, Jean Seberg, Delphine Seyrig, and Agnès Varda are among many others who broke away from stereotypical female characters in pre–World War II films dominated by costumed, high-budget, historical dramas—disparagingly called cinéma de papa—starring actresses who fit a mold of glamour and sexual allure. In the 1950s, influenced by Hollywood movies that featured feisty, strong-willed women, New Wave directors—such as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Louis Malle—created movies that both drew on their idealized images of women and evolved to reflect the tensions and realities of women’s lives. Some New Wave films introduced young free spirits rejecting social strictures; others, multifaceted, mature women facing the complexities of their lives. Viewers were drawn to the dynamics between male and female characters, as well as between actresses and directors. Knudson examines these relationships in detail: Bardot and Roger Vadim; Moreau, Malle, and Truffaut; Emmanuelle Riva and Alain Renais; Karina and Godard; Godard and Seberg. These affairs led many directors to envision women as passive, beautiful objects of desire, but over time, that image began to shatter. “I’m not an apparition, I am a woman,” Seyrig retorts in Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses (1968). Knudson reveals how women’s images were compounded by official censorship and directors’ self-censorship, which avoided nudity and subjects such as abortion, birth control, and prostitution. Drawing liberally on interviews, Knudson allows her large cast of characters to speak candidly and perceptively about their lives and work.
Engaging, well-researched cultural history.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781797228907
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Chronicle Chroma
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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