ABSTRACT
Biographical pictures, or “biopics”, are probably the form of historical film most prevalent in 1930s Hollywood. An important strand of critical thought on popular biography/film biographies leading up to and including the classical era can be traced through Leo Lowenthal,21 Thomas Elsaesser22 and George F. Custen.23 All three have underlined the social function of biography-as-entertainment, and the forms into which the lives of the great and the good are shaped for popular consumption, though Custen’s is by far the most sustained analysis of film biographies. As the biopic has been more underexamined within French cinema studies (echoing the, until fairly recently, relative paucity of genre-centered study), I shall devote some more space to notable French biopics of the period. The comparison of French and American practice shall be pursued largely through the analysis of two particular films.
