Abstract
This chapter explores the use of pre-existing songs from a cultural rather than musicological perspective in a range of film genres. The first part focuses on the musical, particularly on films by Resnais, Ozon and Honoré. The second part explores two major issues in other genres: the increasing frequency of English-language songs, including some sung by French singers, and the way in which French-language songs are used, often in counterpoint to English-language songs. Using Svetlana Boym’s work on nostalgia, I show how French songs serve as markers of family and community, and as an anxious appeal for reparation from loss in the musicals and other genres I cover. English-language songs on the other hand tend to indicate the fragmentation of that same community, but do not look back in sadness.