"PARIS IN THE DARK traces the history of film and film-going in Paris, from the advent of sound cinema, through the Nazi occupation, and finally to postwar reconstruction. Drawing from a wide range of archives, Eric Smoodin reconstructs a cinematic geography of Paris. Focusing on details of the exhibition and screening of films in the neighborhoods and districts of Paris, Smoodin explores how meaning not only is expressed through film, but also is shaped by the particularities of where, when, and how people engage with film, and how spectators understand their own relationships to film. By paying attention to the material and cultural systems that shape the reception of film on the local level-film journalism, distribution systems, movie theaters - Smoodin revises and expands our understanding of what it means to talk about a national cinema, and about French cinema in particular. The book's chapters take us on a tour of Parisian film from the 1930s to the 1950s. The first chapter focuses on films screened in Parisian cinemas from 1931 to 1933; Smoodin analyzes listings in the film tabloid Pour Vous for evidence of a changing film culture, marked by the transition to sound and the development of a transnational, transcultural cinematic economy. In subsequent chapters Smoodin covers topics ranging from the ciné-clubs of Paris as sites of particular cinematic subcultures (1930-1944), to the impact of sound technology on the emerging stardom of Maurice Chevalier and Marlene Dietrich (1929-1935), to outbreaks of politically motivated violence at the cinema (1930-1944). Focusing more closely on the events of World War II, Smoodin examines how cinema became a form of cultural occupation under the Vichy régime (1939-1944).

A final chapter looks at postwar cinema and film-going as an expression and celebration of liberation (1944-1949), while the conclusion considers French government studies of the habits of the national film-going public (1948-1954) in order to reflect on the state of Parisian film culture in more recent decades (1980-2016). PARIS IN THE DARK will interest scholars working in film studies, French culture and history, and cultural studies"--.