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All Roads Lead to Balzac…

  • Zahra Tavassoli ZeaEmail author
Chapter
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Part of the Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture book series (PSADVC)

Abstract

This chapter recapitulates the different ways Rohmer and Rivette have appropriated fundamental elements of Balzac’s worldview. More specifically, it shows that the affiliation between them and the author of The Human Comedy find its meeting ground in the new modes of realism which emerged in the immediate aftermath of WWII. The brotherhood between Bazin’s realist theory and Balzac’s literary aesthetics provides the framework within which Rohmer and Rivette re-interpreted the legacy of realism according to their own personal sensitivity and imagination. The classicism and modernity of these two directors is re-contextualised through wider considerations on their film criticism, practice and novelistic excerpts from Balzac.

Keywords

Balzac Rohmer Rivette Bazin Realism Conclusion 
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© The Author(s) 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Independent ResearcherLondonUK

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