Intermedial DialoguesThe French New Wave and the Other Arts

[...] Schmid’s book provides a new angle of inquiry for analyzing New Wave films, and the strength of the book lies in its analysis of a large and diverse body of cinematic works as well as a review of existing scholarship. [It] offers a clear and comprehensive analysis of the ways in which New Wave directors built their revolutionary cinema through engagement with other revolutionary artists in media ranging from theater to architecture.

Schmid’s impressive grasp of the aesthetic history and theory of these different arts lends a persuasive authority to this account. The wide-ranging case studies and the overall argument will be familiar to seasoned scholars of the New Wave, but the book will be highly valuable to students and teachers grappling with these films, and this period, for the first time.

Schmid’s work is important not only because it offers a fresh approach to the study of New Wave films through an intermedial framework, but it also significantly adds to the debate of medium specificity in cinema. [...] Another aspect worth noting is that Schmid’s intermedial analysis expands itself into multiple media, and Intermedial Dialogues is a significant work for anyone who is not only interested in the history of the French New Wave, but also to those who are invested in exploring cinema’s relationship with the other arts.

Marion Schmid challenges familiar paradigms and provides a dazzling account of New Wave cinema’s engagement with a broad spectrum of culture—literature, theatre, painting, architecture, and photography. Her insightful re-readings of New Wave films and period criticism, deftly combined with contemporary concepts of intermediality, enable us to view this corpus afresh.