Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Facharbeit: American Cultural Studies
Seminar: American Expatriates in Paris
WS 2004/05

An American in Paris: Audrey Hepburn and the City of Light
- A historical analysis of genre cinema & gender roles

by: Sandy Nirwing

Content

1. Introduction 3

1.1 Historical outline of the Parisian movements before the Second World War 4
1.2 A brief introduction to Hollywood- and French- film industry in the postwar period 7

2. Analytical Thesis on the ‘City D’Amour’  9

2.1 The role of the city in films 10

3. Analytical Thesis on Stars 14

3.1 American female typology & European gender roles  14
3.2 Audrey Hepburn – a representative of European subculture 18

4. Conclusion 20

5. Appendix 22

6. Literature 23

6.1 Bibliography 23
6.2 Internet 24
6.3 Filmography 24

1. Introduction

Nowadays, it has become quiet around various Hollywood genres of the Classic Period of cinema. In the time between both World Wars, and also soon after WWII, Hollywood filmmaking meant entertainment to a frustrated and humiliated world audience. Especially dance-comedy- and musical-genres became more picturesque, especially because of Technicolor, the plots less melodramatic and the actors followed a progressive and innovative typecast.

Particularly the world of the Hollywood film musical opened up new possibilities when presenting a fictional world in their studios that enchanted an international audience. Hollywood spared no expenses and pains to explore particularly European capitals to promote a dream as well as their understanding of the American way. To which extent Hollywood created an image of Paris that gained acceptance with a global audience? And in how far can be said that American female stars changed their outer and inner appearance, in order not to correspond to obsolete Hollywood typecast. In my work I would like to give a better impression of what historically happened in American filmmaking, that glorified and idealized the French capital; and in French filmmaking, that searched for new themes, settings and individuals. In the first chapter a historical outline of the time from the 1920s onwards, as well as a brief introduction into the structures of the American- and French- film industry will illustrate to what extent Paris turned out to be an aesthetic and significant feature in motion pictures of that time.

In the following it is of my concern to analyze the City of Light & Love and its international reputation. My analysis leads to one specific aspect of filmmaking – the divergence between the American female (stereo-) typology and European gender roles during the postwar years of the 50s and 60s. Audrey Hepburn serves as a well-known example, which is considered to be a representative for European subculture, French haute couture and American fairy-tale dreams. I try to illustrate in how far Audrey Hepburn changed the female image during a time in which anybody preferred blond femininity instead of brunette individuality. My aim is to find out how much Paris served as the ideological medium – both in French- and in Hollywood- filmmaking.

1.1 Historical outline of Parisian movements before the Second World War

The 1920s in Paris¹

After the First World War, which means the years from 1920 onwards, living in Paris increasingly meant a new kind of physical experience. The avant- garde (app.1) and art-movements like cubism (app.2) and surrealism (app.3) became the latest intellectual revolutionary movements in Paris, which both turned against the rigid structures of Catholicism. According to Janet Flanner (Drutman 1988: xiii), especially the district of St. Germaine became the literary and artistic quarter of both the supporters of avant-garde and bourgeois American writers as T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway or James Joyce as well as for numerous filmmakers and unconventional thinkers who searched a refuge of artistic integrity and anonymity, and found it in the suburbs of the metropolis. Although those writers or artists of that time “did not originate the idea of ‘moving on’”, they became an essential part “of the general literary atmosphere”. (Cowley 1951: 111-12)

However, “Paris accommodated itself to improvement and to destruction” (Drutman 1988: xxiii) because of its loss through change – the metropolis “seemed immutably French” (Drutman 1988: xxiv) as if it held to a certain kind of nostalgia. But the French/American relationship was already established during the late 19th century, especially because of its bohemian atmosphere – everything seemed to be impoverished but inspiring and creative to American artists, who wanted nothing but to express themselves in order to escape from the enduring puritan restrictions overseas. Even during World War I, Paris remained a peaceful city as well as the capital of world culture, where plays, concerts, and other highcultural events ensued as if nothing had happened – Paris was considered of facilitating an easy lifestyle. Janet Flanner mentions that during the 1920s there were “40.000 American residences and approximately over 250.000 tourists, who constituted the new melting pot of avant-garde and modernism”. (Drutman 1988: xxi) Whereas the American culture was influenced by the Victorian era, from which such expatriates felt increasingly isolated, they experienced the possibility to live a new idea of individualism in Paris.

‘The Lost Generation’²

You are all a lost generation. (Gertrude Stein, in: Cowley 1951: 22)

According to Malcolm Cowley the term of the Lost Generation was first used by Gertrude Stein who applied it to young writers born around 1900, to constitute a slogan to separate the bohemian ‘elite’ from former generations: It was useful to older persons because they had been looking for words to express their uneasy feeling that postwar youth – “flaming youth” – had an outlook on life that was different from their own [...] But the phrase was also useful to the youngsters. They had grown up and gone to college during a period of rapid change when time in itself seemed more important than the influence of class and loyalty. (Cowley 1951: 3-4) Their manifest included never working for the system, with a claim for a formal simplification – used to living at the Left Bank of the Seine, their conviction strongly determined the Parisian life – having dulls of café au lait, being always in a hurry, having a loss of sleep like being on cocaine, celebrating an unexampled mental activity, the consumption of lots of alcohol – all of that built the very extraordinary flair which attracted thousands to come. Cowley explains that they “at last had a slogan [that] proclaimed their feeling of separation from older writers and of kinship with one another”:

[...]

1 Drutman, Irving (ed.): Janet Flanner: Introduction, pp. vii-xxiv. In: “Paris was yesterday – 1925-1939”, New York: Harvest, 1988.

2 Cowley, Malcolm: Prologue: The Lost Generation, pp.3-9. In: “Exile’s Return”, New York: Viking, 1951.