Paris is one of the key sites of meaning regarding France's cinematic output. This thesis surveys the contribution German émigré filmmakers made to the French cinema of the 1930s through a series of case studies of their depiction of the nation's capital city. It argues that this contribution was both typical and singular. The émigrés engaged directly with traditions of Parisian representation, but they also played a distinctive role in the important debate over the direction early French sound filmmaking should take. The body of the thesis contains detailed textual analysis of many émigré productions which have hitherto been ignored within film history. It contextualises this analysis with comparative discussion of films made by indigenous professionals and an examination of past and present intertextual aspects of Parisian culture. The thesis moves beyond aesthetic concerns to also consider the political, industrial and social significance of the work of the émigré Filmmakers. The reception of their films is located within a history of the Franco-German relationship as a whole. By drawing widely upon supporting documentation in critical and trade journals of the time, the thesis provides a new history of a crucial transitional point in the development of European film culture.

Includes filmography: leaves 252-256. Bibliography: leaves 241-251. This thesis compares the representation of colonial history in the cinema of France and Australia since 1970. Films examined all had historical colonial settings, a narrative focus principally on aspects of the colonisation process and a director who was descended from former colonisers. It concludes that there are few sustained attempts to confront and resolve the problematic aspects of colonialism's legacy. The tendency to contain the representation of the colonial past within a fictional framework has the inevitable consequence of masking history and avoiding the necessity for dealing with it.