The Cinema of the Dardenne Brothers

Philip Mosley

Philip Mosley

The Cinema of the Dardenne Brothers

Responsible Realism

In: Directors' Cuts

Columbia University Press | 2013

https://doi.org/10.7312/mosl16328

Overview
Contents

About this book

The brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have established an international reputation for their emotionally powerful realist cinema. Inspired by their home turf of Liège-Seraing, a former industrial hub of French-speaking southern Belgium, they have crafted a series of fiction films that blends acute observation of life on the social margins with moral fables for the postmodern age. This volume analyses the brothers' career from their leftist video documentaries of the 1970s and 1980s through their debut as directors of fiction films in the late 1980s and early 1990s to their six major achievements from The Promise (1996) to The Kid with a Bike (2011), an oeuvre that includes two Golden Palms at the Cannes film festival, for Rosetta (1999) and The Child (2005). It argues that the ethical dimension of the Dardennes' work complements rather than precludes their sustained expression of a fundamental political sensibility.

Author information

Philip Mosley is professor of English and comparative literature at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of many works, including Split Screen: Belgian Cinema and Cultural Identity (2001) and a translation from French of The Book of the Snow by François Jacqmin, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Reviews

Melina Gils:
A comprehensive overview.

Felix Thompson, University of Derby, UK:
An excellent introduction to the Dardenne brothers' films but also a lucid exposition of the historical and intellectual frameworks in which their social realism can be evaluated. This volume also explains how their filmmaking can be understood in terms of major contemporary philosophical currents.

David James, University of Southern California:
A brilliant account of the Dardenne brothers' cinema... their politically engaged social realism and concern with the pauperized victims of global capital are beautifully complemented by the precise lucidity of the author's prose, the nuance of his textual analysis, and his provocative but non-dogmatic social theory.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	v
Acknowledgements Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	vi
1. Responsible Realists Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
2. Cinematic Reference Points Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	26
3. The Video Documentaries, 1974–83 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	39
4. Foraying into Fiction, 1986–92 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	63
5. Breakthrough: The Promise, 1996 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	76
6. First Palme d’Or: Rosetta, 1999 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	86
7. Pushing the Envelope: The Son, 2002 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	97
8. Second Palme d’Or: The Child, 2005 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	107
9. A Minor Shift: The Silence of Lorna, 2008 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	116
Afterword: The Kid with a Bike, 2011 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	127
Filmography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	134
Bibliography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	141
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	148

The Cinema of the Dardenne Brothers

Responsible Realism

Details

Formats