BEN McCANN
Biographic Data
| ID | 5705218 |
|---|---|
| NAME | BEN McCANN |
| GIVEN NAMES | BEN |
| FAMILY NAME | McCANN |
| SIGNATURE | BEN MCCANN |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Adelaide |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3545-1683 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
‘Servir avec désintéressement la cause du cinéma français’
In 1946, French film director Julien Duvivier was invited by the popular film magazine Cinémonde to write a series of weekly columns and give his anonymous views on current filmmaking policy in France and the role of the popular film critic and rate new film releases. Writing under the pseudonym ‘Platon' between October 1946 and February 1947, Duvivier wrote fascinating interventions that reveal a great deal about his own aesthetic, formal and id…
Lang and Godard
In Le Dinosaure et le bébé (recorded in 1964 but released in 1967), Jean-Luc Godard interviews Fritz Lang—who recently worked with him on Le Mépris (1963)—to discuss the role of cinema in their careers, reflect on their filmmaking choices and contemplate the broader politics of the film industry. This article traces Godard’s long-standing admiration of Lang as a filmmaker who worked in America and was able to transcend the limitations of the Holl…
In Praise of a Character Actor
In the preface to Raymond Chirat and Olivier Barrot’s Les Excentriques du cinéma français , Barrot writes affectionately of the excentriques of French cinema: “Ce sont les seconds rôles, acteurs de complément, aussi indispensables à la puissance d’évocation des films que les stars. Membres actifs de la famille des comédiens, catalyseurs de notre complicité, ces ‘excentriques’ [...] sont nos amis”. Located far from the centre, in terms of audience…
Voicing Resilience
Une force qui va”
Taking as its starting point a 1978 article by film critic Molly Haskell, in which she described Gérard Depardieu as “tactile [...] grasping, eating, touching, coming to physical terms with everything in sight”, this article considers a largely overlooked Depardieu role, as the committed revolutionary leader Georges Danton in Andrzej Wajda’s Danton (1983)—a historical role that reflects the actor’s commitment to the relevance of the Revolutionary…
History, Truth and (Mis)representation in Versailles (2015-2018)
The TV series Versailles, set during the construction of the Palace of Versailles and the reign of Louis XIV, premiered in 2015 on Canal+ in France and was quickly picked up by television companies around the world. Almost immediately, it was mired in controversy: at €27 million, it was the most expensive television series ever made in France; it used primarily British actors; the opening and closing credits played out to music by French electron…
Ici, une immense usine perfectionnée; là, une chambre meublée de faubourg’
This article focuses on a specific instance of migration and mobility in French film director Julien Duvivier’s career, namely his first brief stint in Hollywood in 1938. He was invited to film The Great Waltz, an expensive costume drama, for MGM, a studio renowned for its lavish attention to mise en scène. Unlike other French directors who had spent, or would subsequently spend, time in America, Duvivier succeeded in inculcating his own particul…
Mobility and Migration in France and the Francophone World
What Trauner Did Next
Alexandre Trauner is remembered for his highly evocative `poetic realist' designs in films such as Le Quai des brumes (1938), Hôtel du Nord (1938), Le Jour se lève (1939) and Les Enfants du paradis (1945). His designs intertwined familiar iconography with stylistic accentuation so that the decor became the narrative's organising image. This article will concentrate on three of Trauner's American films: Othello (1952), Land of the Pharaohs (1955) …
Pierced Borders, Punctured Bodies
The article discusses the proliferation of contemporary French horror film. According to the author, the emergence of horror film genre in the country surprises the entire community since French cinema is perceived as a classic realist cinema and it is not an integral aspect of French national cinema tradition. In addition, the author notes that the presence of horror film depicts a continuity and discontinuity regarding cinematic trends which ha…
History, Truth and (Mis)representation in Versailles (2015-2018)
The TV series Versailles, set during the construction of the Palace of Versailles and the reign of Louis XIV, premiered in 2015 on Canal+ in France and was quickly picked up by television companies around the world. Almost immediately, it was mired in controversy: at €27 million, it was the most expensive television series ever made in France; it used primarily British actors; the opening and closing credits played out to music by French electron…
Mobility and Migration in France and the Francophone World
Pierced Borders, Punctured Bodies
The article discusses the proliferation of contemporary French horror film. According to the author, the emergence of horror film genre in the country surprises the entire community since French cinema is perceived as a classic realist cinema and it is not an integral aspect of French national cinema tradition. In addition, the author notes that the presence of horror film depicts a continuity and discontinuity regarding cinematic trends which ha…
Pierced Borders, Punctured Bodies
The article discusses the proliferation of contemporary French horror film. According to the author, the emergence of horror film genre in the country surprises the entire community since French cinema is perceived as a classic realist cinema and it is not an integral aspect of French national cinema tradition. In addition, the author notes that the presence of horror film depicts a continuity and discontinuity regarding cinematic trends which ha…
What Trauner Did Next
Alexandre Trauner is remembered for his highly evocative `poetic realist' designs in films such as Le Quai des brumes (1938), Hôtel du Nord (1938), Le Jour se lève (1939) and Les Enfants du paradis (1945). His designs intertwined familiar iconography with stylistic accentuation so that the decor became the narrative's organising image. This article will concentrate on three of Trauner's American films: Othello (1952), Land of the Pharaohs (1955) …
Ici, une immense usine perfectionnée; là, une chambre meublée de faubourg’
This article focuses on a specific instance of migration and mobility in French film director Julien Duvivier’s career, namely his first brief stint in Hollywood in 1938. He was invited to film The Great Waltz, an expensive costume drama, for MGM, a studio renowned for its lavish attention to mise en scène. Unlike other French directors who had spent, or would subsequently spend, time in America, Duvivier succeeded in inculcating his own particul…
Mobility and Migration in France and the Francophone World
History, Truth and (Mis)representation in Versailles (2015-2018)
The TV series Versailles, set during the construction of the Palace of Versailles and the reign of Louis XIV, premiered in 2015 on Canal+ in France and was quickly picked up by television companies around the world. Almost immediately, it was mired in controversy: at €27 million, it was the most expensive television series ever made in France; it used primarily British actors; the opening and closing credits played out to music by French electron…
Une force qui va”
Taking as its starting point a 1978 article by film critic Molly Haskell, in which she described Gérard Depardieu as “tactile [...] grasping, eating, touching, coming to physical terms with everything in sight”, this article considers a largely overlooked Depardieu role, as the committed revolutionary leader Georges Danton in Andrzej Wajda’s Danton (1983)—a historical role that reflects the actor’s commitment to the relevance of the Revolutionary…
Voicing Resilience
In Praise of a Character Actor
In the preface to Raymond Chirat and Olivier Barrot’s Les Excentriques du cinéma français , Barrot writes affectionately of the excentriques of French cinema: “Ce sont les seconds rôles, acteurs de complément, aussi indispensables à la puissance d’évocation des films que les stars. Membres actifs de la famille des comédiens, catalyseurs de notre complicité, ces ‘excentriques’ [...] sont nos amis”. Located far from the centre, in terms of audience…
Lang and Godard
In Le Dinosaure et le bébé (recorded in 1964 but released in 1967), Jean-Luc Godard interviews Fritz Lang—who recently worked with him on Le Mépris (1963)—to discuss the role of cinema in their careers, reflect on their filmmaking choices and contemplate the broader politics of the film industry. This article traces Godard’s long-standing admiration of Lang as a filmmaker who worked in America and was able to transcend the limitations of the Holl…
‘Servir avec désintéressement la cause du cinéma français’
In 1946, French film director Julien Duvivier was invited by the popular film magazine Cinémonde to write a series of weekly columns and give his anonymous views on current filmmaking policy in France and the role of the popular film critic and rate new film releases. Writing under the pseudonym ‘Platon' between October 1946 and February 1947, Duvivier wrote fascinating interventions that reveal a great deal about his own aesthetic, formal and id…
Art (9 works) · Art history (6 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (5 works) · History (5 works) · History (5 works) · Humanities (5 works) · French Historical and Cultural Studies (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Movie theater (3 works) · Political science (3 works)