March 2012: French Cinema - Faculty Visit with Martine Gantrel-Ford

Post date: Apr 02, 2012 5:33:44 PM

Martine Gantrel joined us from Smith's French department on March 27 for an eventful evening. We discussed two films depicting Paris. One, "Paris" (directed by Cedric Klapish), presents the city as a place people live. The other, "Midnight in Paris" (directed by Woody Allen), is an artist's dream of the city. Many attendees seemed to favor "Paris" due to its realism and artistry though some found the Klapish unresolved story lines frustrating. We discovered through Martine that this is part of this Klapish's style, love it or leave it. "Midnight in Paris" was less discussed. One true blue Woody Allen fan found it to be "too gentile", not the old Woody Allen that she grew up with.

Martine referred us to a number of other films that she shows as part of her French Cinema class. Instead of listing them all here, she has sent along a couple of her syllabi from past classes. I (Susan Strom) am particularly interested in watching "Breathless", one of the first films in the French New Wave which, I learned, heavily influenced the cinema of today.

Aside from the films, Martine shared some news from the language departments at Smith. We realized that many of our club members went to Smith at a time when only language majors went abroad, now, of course, many students go abroad. The Paris program is particularly strong at this time. We briefly discussed the Chineses and Arabic programs,. Martine noted that those languages have strong enrollment in the first year, but it drops precipitously after, likely due to the difficulty of those languages for native Latin language speakers.

A huge thank you to Anne Adams for hosting us in the rain and by candle light. Her beautiful home lost power about an hour before we arrived due to the rain that day. She took it in stride and pulled out the candles.

Thank you also to Catherine Carr for assisting with set up and clean up, to Smith College for sponsoring Martine's trip and to Martine for being such an inspiring visitor.

Attached are the syllabi.