Assembly Lines

A bold new understanding of montage and French cinematic history

Amid the tumult of change that swept through French society in the wake of World War II, a trio of visionary filmmakers sought to make meaning of the chaos by revitalizing a common method: montage. Revealing Nicole Védrès, Alain Resnais, and Chris Marker as more than just groundbreaking auteurs, Ivan Cerecina shows how their collective infusion of montage with avant-garde aesthetics renewed the art of cinema while helping France reckon with its past and imagine its future.

Assembly Lines challenges a dominant story of postwar French film, championed by critics at important film journals like Cahiers du cinéma, that has generally centered realist film aesthetics. Working against this tendency, Cerecina shows how Védrès, Resnais, and Marker revitalized montage as a technique in response to the crises of the times, using it to process the ravages of the recent past, expose hidden connections, and uncover signs of coming catastrophe. Wedding insightful analyses of films and French cultural history with writings from lesser-heard voices like André Malraux, Jacques Brunius, and Henri Langlois, Assembly Lines illuminates obscured networks of critics, filmmakers, and historians to reshape our conception of French film and documentary. Meanwhile, Cerecina's in-depth archival research unearths vital documents, including correspondence and production notes on Védrès's Paris 1900 and Resnais's Night and Fog.

More than a cinematic retrospective, Cerecina's investigation of montage is also a call to action today as contemporary crises prompt reevaluation of our cultural histories. Assembly Lines exemplifies a powerful, future-oriented practice of historical reflection with implications that go well beyond the study of film.

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