Belgian director Jacques Feyder once ranked among French cinema's foremost directors. Over the course of his career, he filmed a wide range of genres including maternal melodrama, political satire, historical comedy and colonial cinema, and some of his films, such as Le Grand jeu (1934) and La Kermesse héroïque (1935), are considered classics. He also collaborated with some of the most accomplished set designers, screenwriters and technicians of his time and directed legendary stars including Arletty, Greta Garbo, Louis Jouvet and Michèle Morgan. However, Feyder's contributions to cinema have yet to be fully understood. This essential study - the first-ever English-language book on the director - reassesses his complex portrayals of gender, class and colonialism to reveal hitherto neglected characteristics of his directorial style. It also reveals his profound influence on the Golden Age of French cinema and on subsequent generations of filmmakers in France and abroad, such as Marcel Carné, Stephen Frears and Pablo Berger.