Book Review: Meir, C.: Mass producing European cinema: Studiocanal and its works. New York, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 272 pp. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Studiocanal and the Changing Industrial Landscape of European Cinema and Television
This article analyzes the recent growth of Studiocanal, which in recent years has expanded from being the French-language production arm of Canal Plus to the preeminent European distributor and producer of fictional film and television. The focus here is on the company's corporate development, with particular emphasis on Studiocanal's acquisition of sales and distribution interests across Europe and beyond, and with its subsequent move into television production. A study of Studiocanal reveals a great deal about the current state of the European film and television industries and allows us to rethink traditional ideas about the relationship between Hollywood and Europe.
One of the most remarkable developments in European cinema over the last 10 years has been the creation of not one but several vertically integrated studios that produce and actively distribute films across a number of national territories. The rise of these pan-European studios signals a sea change in an industrial landscape that has long been fragmented by nation and language and film historians must begin contemplating what this change means for European cinema and global cinema more broadly. This article seeks to forward such a project by critically examining the output of Studiocanal, the foremost company involved in this trend. In so doing, it focuses on two films in particular: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011) and Unknown (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2011). The article argues that these two films are emblematic of Studiocanal’s two larger production strategies, one of which focuses on middlebrow production and marketing and the other which is concerned with mainstream popular genre cinema. Dividing these two tendencies, the article argues, are distinct treatments of genre, authorship and stardom, even while industrial factors relating to production and the employment of European artists unites them. Surveying these differences and similarities, the article illustrates the bigger impact that Studiocanal and by extension its fellow European studios are having on the continent’s cinematic landscape while also comparing and contrasting these studios with those in Hollywood which have long dominated the global film industry.
Global and local rhetorics at a public-facing private company: Studiocanal and French cinema
Contemporary French Civilization: Volume 46, Issue 3
This article utilizes Canal+’s film production and distribution subsidiary Studiocanal as a way to understand both companies’ impacts on French cinema since the formation of the subsidiary in the early 1990s. As such, the article is structured as a chronology and an analysis of the major films made in French and financed by Studiocanal in terms of their critical and popular reception. The article also examines the talent relationships underpinning this production and the trajectories of the various stars, writers, directors, and producers who worked on the films as well as the executives who oversaw them. Finally, the article analyzes the corporate rhetoric that was advanced by both Studiocanal and Canal+ over the years to position itself in the French and international markets. Synthesizing these branches of the analysis and noting certain cyclical patterns, the article argues that Studiocanal’s relationship to French cinema has been complex and changeable, at times limited in favo...
Channeling globalism: Canal+ as transnational French genre film producer
Contemporary French Civilization: Volume 46, Issue 3, 2021
This article examines Canal+’s contribution to the recent or contemporary consolidation of three genres traditionally excluded from the French filmmaking landscape: romantic comedies, horror films, and teen movies. The many films from these emergent French genres funded and in frequent cases also more indirectly supported by Canal+ speak to the organization’s status as a transnational, transmedia production entity. Moreover, analyzing the new French genre trends in whose burgeoning the company has been instrumental suggests the difficulties of unpicking geo-cultural allegiances and influences in an ever more multidirectional, multiplatform, cross-hybridizing mediasphere. This article considers the case study films Alibi.com (2017) and Grave (2016) to illustrate the fact that, like the European audiovisual mainstream as a whole, French genre films are bound up in an increasingly transnational and complex intertextual web - a state of affairs promoted by multinational conglomerates su...