Fee, A; (2017) Blossoms Breaking at the Dawn of Cinephilia: The Reception of D.W. Griffith in France. In: Keil, C, (ed.) A companion to D.W. Griffith. Wiley Blackwell Publishing Ltd.: Malden, MA, USA.

Text Annie Fee_chapter_Wiley Blackwell Companion to DW Griffith .pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff Download (286kB)

Abstract

D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms emboldened many postwar film critics, later to be called the first cinephiles, to bring their campaign for serious cinema appreciation to the highest echelons of French society. This chapter first describes the conditions under which the Parisian elite initially viewed the film under the tutelage of Edmond Benoit‐Levy and Louis Forest at the luxury Salle Marivaux cinema. The chapter then discusses the reception of the film by ordinary filmgoers and the reasons they gave for their dislike of Griffith's film. Finally, it concludes by demonstrating how cinephile critics appropriated the public's negative reactions to Broken Blossoms: Rather than admit defeat, cinephiles used the complaints regarding the film as an opportunity to emphasize the public's “lack of experience”, an explanation they subsequently used to campaign for establishing specialized cinemas for a public attuned to cinema art.

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