Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
2-2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
French
Advisor
Sam Di Iorio
Committee Members
Maxime Blanchard
Domna C. Stanton
Subject Categories
French and Francophone Literature | Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Other Film and Media Studies | Women's Studies
Keywords
"young girls" "film studies" "postwar cinema" "male gaze" "lolita"
Abstract
Figures of the Jeune Fille in Postwar French Cinema: Libertine Ingenues, Lolitas and Creatures from Caroline Chérie to Monika examines how teenage girls became symbols of political, sexual, and cinematic revolution in France from the 1950s through the 1960s. French films such as Richard Pottier’s Dear Caroline (1951), Henri Verneuil’s Forbidden Fruit (1952), and Claude Autant-Lara’s Love is My Profession (1958) demonstrate an obsessive preoccupation with the young girl as figurehead for social change. On-screen, young girls perceived as lolitas and libertine ingenues celebrate sexual autonomy, corporeal agency, and independence, renegotiating their place in the nuclear family and society at large. Focusing on a group of midcentury films, I analyze how actresses such as Harriet Andersson in Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika (1953) and Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim’s And God Created Woman (1956) became important cultural icons by merging with their characters. I examine the figures they became through the conceptual prism of ‘creatures’ of cinema. Though these creatures celebrate sexual emancipation, social independence, and the right to love, they remain subordinated, shaped by directors to satisfy patriarchal expectations and desires in an exploitative system deployed in service of artistic vision. While exposing how these young girls are instrumentalized through what Laura Mulvey called “the male gaze,” I reclaim the creature as the work of the actress-creator by analyzing actresses’ performances and collaborative processes with film crews. Finally, I demonstrate how these figures inspired the next generation of feminist filmmakers like Catherine Breillat to reclaim cinematic power and develop a new language for representing young girls, thereby restoring artistic agency to the muses.
Recommended Citation
Verneret, Nina, "Figures of the Jeune Fille in Postwar French Cinema: Libertine Ingenues, Lolitas, and Creatures from Caroline Chérie to Monika" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6605
Included in
French and Francophone Literature Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons
