Image source: Le petit parisien, supplément littéraire, February 17th 1922
Carried out in French, this project explores different aspects of the cinéroman, a format that is both literary and cinematographic, within the context of French media of the 1920s. / Ce projet, mené en français, explore différentes facettes du cinéroman, objet à la fois littéraire et filmique, au sein de l'espace médiatique français dans les années 1920.
The term cinéroman refers to a narrative that is released both as a book and as a film. Such productions existed in many different forms throughout the 1920s but became less and less frequent as talkies evolved. The films and the books were aimed at large audiences, especially at readers who enjoyed easy-to-read serials whose style relied heavily on action and adventure. Designed with financial and economic motives in mind, cinéromans were available on several media in order to generate profits.
The cinéroman remains widely unstudied and as a result, it has not been defined or analyzed from the perspective of its relation to cinema and literature. By focusing on the Société des cinéromans’s production, and more specifically on the works of Arthur Bernède, this project aims to examine the multiple aspects of this hybrid format - half book, half film - to understand its place within the effervescence of the French cultural and media systems of the 1920s.
