Un rendez-vous manqué. Journaux illustrés et films comiques dans la France d'avant 1915
The links between the cinema and the illustrated press were perceived very early by the observers. Now, if historians seem to agree on an "influence" of the illustrated press on the comic production of French cinema, humorous newspapers are not very interested in cinema in general and completely, or almost completely, ignore comic films. How to explain this phenomenon ? This thesis proposes to develop three lines of thought. First, we try to understand the way in which the illustrated press saw the emergence and growth of the film show at the turn of the 19th century until the mid-1910s. For most chroniclers the cinema appears as an intruder among the Parisian stage shows, deporting in a way the rivalry between theater and cinema in the illustrated press. Then, by looking at the proximity between films and newspapers, it appears that cinema borrows from newspapers as much as it recycles their comic stories, modernizes them. This leads us finally to consider the two media from the angle of their differences, both ideological and political, preventing a meeting that seemed at first sight inevitable.
burlesque caricature Illustrated press Comic films Intermediality Pre-cinema