Susan Hayward is Emerita Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Exeter
Barry Nevin is Lecturer in French at Technological University Dublin

Introduction – Susan Hayward and Barry Nevin

Part I Behind the screens – making the possible happen
1 Screenwriters in the 1950s: roles, practices and partnerships – Sarah Leahy
2 French technique: cinematographers in the cinéma d’équipe – Tadas Bugnevicius
3 Sound engineers in 1950s: classical French sound in French quality cinema – Martin Barnier
4 Symphonism, song and jazz: the music of 1950s French cinema – Jérôme Rossi
5 Couturiers and costumiers – Jennie Cousins
6 Set design and designers – Susan Hayward
7 Editing la qualité française – Maya Sidhu

Part II Filmmakers and genre
8 Overview of the 1950s French comedy – Susan Hayward
9 ‘Why I agreed to be your wife? That’s another story’: Jean Boyer’s resilient women – Barry Nevin
10 More than ‘a decent job’: family, finance and popular entertainment in André Berthomieu’s comedies – Barry Nevin
11 Fernandel and Henri Verneuil or the ‘horse and the chameleon’ – Jean Montarnal
12 War and uneasy peace in French comedy – Barry Nevin
13 Overview of 1950s French drama – Susan Hayward
14 André Cayatte’s cine-debates and the sombre face of injustice – Jean Montarnal
15 Yves Ciampi: ‘For me the cinema is not a job. It’s a vice, a drug to use today’s language’ – Susan Hayward
16 Danielle Darrieux and Michèle Morgan: assertive women in 1950s French drama – Geneviève Sellier
17 Georges Lacombe and Denys de La Patellière: studies on family, intergenerational conflict, class and disability – Susan Hayward
18 Jean Dréville’s heroic aviators – Barry Nevin
19 Social realism: history, hybridity, and the cinema as filter – Eric Smoodin
20 The French thriller of the 1950s – Cécile Sorin
21 Jean Gabin and Gilles Grangier: partners in crime – Ginette Vincendeau
22 Bernard Borderie and his Lemmy Caution series – between film noir and comedy – Cécile Sorin
23 Henri Decoin’s resistance-thriller duo with Françoise Arnoul – delving the depths of murky spies in La Chatte (1958) and La Chatte sort ses griffes (1959-60) – Susan Hayward
24 Overview of 1950s French costume drama – Barry Nevin
25 Revenge of the nice – Jennie Cousins
26 Jacqueline Audry: a case study in subversion – Diana Holmes
27 Adapting canonicity: adaptation, authorship and the marketing of literary grandeur in quality French cinema – Kate Griffiths

Part III Filmmakers and their stars – stars and their directors
28 Julien Duvivier, Fernandel and two Don Camillos – Ben McCann
29 Big subjects: Jean Delannoy’s films with Michèle Morgan and Jean Gabin –Tadas Bugnevicius
30 Michel Boisrond and Brigitte Bardot: genre and gender – Sarah Leahy
31 The films of Luis Mariano with Richard Pottier: Spanish exotism and the renewal of the cinematic operetta – Marie Cadalanu
32 Jean Marais: forging a body – an actor of metamorphoses – Susan Hayward
33 Gérard Philipe: portraying the ‘lost’ generation – Susan Hayward
34 Bourvil: ‘Nothing can be obtained by violence, only by gentleness’ – Susan Hayward

Part IV Big collaborations
35 The aesthetics of otherness in Christian-Jaque’s collaborations with Christian Matras, Robert Gys and Jacques Desagneaux – Barry Nevin
36 André Hunebelle, René-Christian Forget and the construction of classical sound – Martin Barnier
37 Presenting ‘the social issues around us’: Jean-Paul Le Chanois, Emma Lévin-Le Chanois and Marc Fossard in 1950s Paris – Barry Nevin
38 Storytelling strategies and narrative experiments in la qualité française – Dominic Topp

Afterword – Susan Hayward and Barry Nevin

Appendix A
Bibliography
Index