French impressionist cinema

French impressionist cinema (also known as first avant-garde or narrative avant-garde) refers to a group of French films and filmmakers of the 1920s. Film scholars have had much difficulty in defining this movement or for that matter deciding whether it should be considered a movement at all. David Bordwell has attempted to define a unified stylistic paradigm and set of tenets. Others, namely Richard Abel, criticize these attempts and group the films and filmmakers more loosely, based on a common goal of "exploration of the process of representation and signification in narrative film discourse." Still others such as Dudley Andrew would struggle with awarding any credibility at all as "movement".