This revised and updated version of a successful and established text, *French National Cinema* offers a thorough and much-needed historical overview of French cinema at a time when it continues to grow in popularity with films such as *Amelie* and *Belleville Rendez-vous.* Brought wholly up to date to include political and social developments in French cinema in the 1990s, its fresh approach and groundbreaking new writing on the subject offers a much further understanding of French cinema and its relationship with the French national identity. New subjects covered include: * the GATT negotiations of 1993 * French cinema’s increasing dependence on investment from television * the rise of the multiplex * the implications of the introduction of digital technology. Ideal for all students of cinema, film studies and film history, this book traces the eco-history of the French film and its key figures and movements, and it places them in their wider political and cultural context.