The construction of ‘Jacques Becker’: realism, popular film and the auteur in 1950s film criticism

Abstract

Jacques Becker is well known as an auteur, one of the few French directors working in the post-war period who has been hailed as an ‘uncle’ of the New Wave (alongside Robert Bresson, Max Ophuls, Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Tati). This article positions him in relation to the ‘quality’ and popular cinema of the period through an exploration of the critical discourses that coalesce around his films. Becker embraced an auteurist conception of cinema but operated in an industry that was dominated by a commercial, quality cinema of international co-productions, stars and films destined for export. Drawing on articles from both the specialist and general press, this article explores the construction of Becker as an auteur at the very moment when the politique des auteurs was setting out its stall in opposition to the Tradition of Quality and popular cinema more generally. By tracing how Becker came to occupy a unique position in post-war French film, it sheds light on the framing of popular, quality and auteur film in relation to key social, political and aesthetic discourses in play at this time.