Recommended....

Library Journal

...recommended...a useful reference for anyone involved in the film industry.

American Reference Books Annual

Oscherwitz (French and francophone studies, Southern Methodist U.) and Higgins (comparative literature and film, Pennsylvania State U.) provide a dictionary of French film from the silent era to the present. The dictionary is meant to be an overview rather than comprehensive, and entries encompass actors, directors, films, movements, producers, studios, cinematographers, and screenwriters. Examples are Jean Cocteau, Diva, Catherine Deneuve, poetic realism, and Francois Truffaut. The introduction traces the history of French film as an industry and art form. The volume is aimed at academics, students, and general readers.

Reference and Research Book News

A valuable reference work if only for being one of a kind in English. However, that value is fully earned given the thoroughness with which it succeeds in its project....Particularly worthy of praise is its extensive cross-referencing, made possible by the authors' diligence, which allows one to get lost within its pages seeking out connections between entries. The authors have ultimately succeeded in the project of writing a historical dictionary: providing a reference that embodies the connections, influences, and interactions of history as well as enabling the reader ready access to and an understanding of that complex network.

2008, Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal

The authors have amassed an impressive body of information about the directors, movies, actors, and movements that defined French cinema, while documenting recent trends that have blurred the boundaries of such traditional notions of national cinema. From the dozens of cross-listed entries, the reader gets a sense of how national identity has always played a central role in French film, from the staged documentaries of the Lumiere brothers to the more recent heritage films, with their equally imagined construction of historic events and nostalgic longing for a mythical French past.

Film Quarterly

The Historical Dictionary of French Cinema presents a broad overview of French cinema and its development all in a reasonably sized, 450-page single volume....It is a useful reference work and source book on the French cinema, which will be found of interest to students of the cinema, those on film studies courses, and those wishing to study the place and influence of French cinema in the world.

2008, Reference Reviews