“Masculine Singular offers a rigorous and multi-faceted study of the New Wave, integrating an analysis of the socio-cultural and economic factors leading to the movement’s emergence, extensive reception analysis, and close readings organized around specific filmmakers, key films, and ‘star figures.’ . . . Within a French film scholarship that has been remarkably hostile to feminist interventions, Masculine Singular offers a strong, clear and nuanced analysis indispensable to feminist film scholarship.” — Julianne Pidduck, Canadian Journal of Film Studies
“[A] provocative, convincing book that puts the new wave in an altogether new light. It seems guaranteed to generate discussion for years to come. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.” — N. A. Baker, Choice
“[Sellier’s] patiently researched and persuasively argued volume should immediately become a standard work on the reading list of anyone teaching New Wave cinema. . . . Sellier’s overall thesis is fresh, timely and hard to ignore.” — Douglas Morrey, Modern and Contemporary France
“By creating a feminist social history of the New Wave through a subtle weaving of sociology and film critical analysis, Sellier is truly a pioneer. Her historicizing of the movement that changed the course of film history has earned this powerful book a place on that pantheon bookshelf of indispensable feminist theoretical texts.” — Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Cineaste
“Countless books and essays have ruminated on the cinephiles' fixation with this particular period in cinema's moody history, but Genevieve Sellier's remarkable work, Masculine Singular (translated by Kristin Ross), towers as one of the most accomplished. . . . Focused on an essential era, Sellier’s book is essential reading.” — Michael Dalton, M/C Reviews
“For students of film history, the book provides valuable critical perspectives on a brief, but revolutionary movement.” — Rick Taylor, Feminist Review Blog
“Francophone French cinema studies have been curiously blind to issues of gender over the years, in stark contrast to Anglophone work where gender studies is one of the more dominant paradigms. A notable exception to this is Geneviève Sellier. . . . The current volume therefore sits in a coherent and extraordinarily committed trajectory. . . . It is an important book as there has been. . . .” — Phil Powrie, Journal of Gender Studies
“Sellier writes engagingly and with a ferocious intellect. . . .” — Erich Kuersten, Bright Lights Film Journal
“Sellier’s fascinating new book is essential reading for students of French film history and specifically the New Wave. For those who regularly teach courses on the New Wave, Sellier’s book offers a way to help students deconstruct some of the aura surrounding the period and better appreciate the cultural and aesthetic contradictions of French society in the late 1950s and early 1960s.” — David Pettersen H-France, H-Net Reviews
“Sellier's Masculine Singular explores the implications of masculinity within national film culture, and shows how the French New Wave was formed as a political protest by men (in particular the Cahiers critics and young filmmakers) against the growing women's rights movement in France that blossomed in the 1950s. . . . [It] illustrate[s] the significance of re-thinking film through the lens of masculinity.” — Michael Brian Faucette, Scope
“This excellent study aims a well-targeted and sustained critique at the representation of gender in French New Wave film. . . . Sellier’s style is trenchant and clear and facilitates a lucid and powerful demoythologizing of the New Wave. Originally published in French, the monograph is ably translated by Kristin Ross, herself an expert on post-war French culture. . . . this book is an elegant and energetic reassessment of the sacred cows of French cinema, and a very necessary tonic to the accepted wisdom on this most ‘over-mediatized ’ period of French film history.” — Guy Austin, French History
“Thanks to this unwavering translation, Geneviève Sellier’s bracing exposé has stripped the New Wave of its stylish attire to reveal an unappealing male body. Vigilant and determined, she has trolled a sea of French criticism to net her evidence.” — Dudley Andrew, Yale University
“This remarkable book will change readers’ view of New Wave cinema. Geneviève Sellier approaches this key movement in French cinema from an original perspective, developing a nuanced yet incisive argument about the links between masculinity, auteurism, and filmic representations.” — Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris