Christian-Jaque’s cartographic chronicles of the Fourth Republic (1946–1958)

During Cahiers du cinéma’s assault on the Tradition of Quality, Christian-Jaque’s films became central to the polemics that pitted the Tradition against auteur cinema. Since then, such diatribes against la Qualité française are chiefly responsible for keeping his name alive. This article reassesses his films of the peak ‘quality’ years (1945–1958) in two stages. First, it surveys critical opinions of his work, illustrating why he became synonymous with quality cinema but also highlighting his unduly neglected roles as a Resistance figure and political filmmaker. It then demonstrates that Christian-Jaque combined studio décor and location work to develop a cartographic aesthetic steeped in unsettling collective memories of war and the immediate challenges that weighed upon contemporary France. Key to this analysis are case studies of three films: Un Revenant/A Lover’s Return (1946), Si tous les gars du monde… /If All the Guys in the World… (1956) and La Loi, c’est la loi/The Law is the Law (1958). By reassessing the relationship between Christian-Jaque’s directorial style and the Fourth Republic’s socio-political climate, this article reveals continuities between the Tradition of Quality and canonical movements such as Italian neorealism and the French New Wave.