ABSTRACT
René Clair and Jean Renoir, upon returning to France following Second World War, each turned to the film musical genre, Clair with Les Belles de nuit (1952, Beauties of the night) and Renoir with French Cancan (1954). The nostalgia that the musical numbers evoke in each film points to a subtle contemporary critique of the post-war French public and reflexively comments on cinema’s audiovisual efficacy for making such statements. Reconsidering these films side by side reveals the political undertones of post-war musical films in France, provides a broader understanding of the possibilities for interpreting music’s role in cinematic nostalgia, and reveals alternative approaches to the film musical than those being offered contemporaneously in Hollywood.
