ABSTRACT
By all accounts, the French cinema industry has been in crisis almost since its inception. Georges Sadoul (1962, 10) puts the date as early as 1908; Richard Abel (1984, 10) points to 1914 as the moment of France’s decline as film leader and 1918 (i.e., post-First World War) as the year when the industry first experienced a crisis. Mapping the ecohistory (ecological history) of the French cinema reveals an intriguing pattern of repetition and stagnation from which the industry has rarely managed to disengage itself.
