Cahiers du Cinéma: The 1960s (1960-1968): New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood / Edition 1

by Jim Hillier

Overview

In the turbulent sixties, the provocative French film journal Cahiers du Cinéma was at its most influential and controversial. The first successes of the New Wave by major Cahiers contributors such as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and Claude Chabrol focused international attention on the revitalization of French cinema and its relation to film criticism; and in the early 1960s the journal’s laudatory critiques of popular American movies were attaining the greatest notoriety.

As the lively articles, interviews, and polemical discussions in this volume reveal, the 1960s saw the beginnings of significant new directions in filmmaking and film criticism changes in which the New Wave itself was a major factor. The auteur theory that the journal had championed in the 1950s began to be rethought and revalued. At the same time, along with a reassessment of American film, Cahiers began to embrace new, often oppositional forms of cinema and criticism, culminating in the political and aesthetic radicalism of the ensuing decade.

The selections, translated under the supervision of the British Film Institute, are annotated by Jim Hillier, and context is provided in his general introduction and part introductions. For an understanding of the important changes that took place in cinema and film criticism in the 1960s and beyond, this book is essential reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674090651
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/01/1992
Series:	Harvard Film Studies , #5
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jim Hillier is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Bulmershe College of Higher Education, Reading, England.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Books frequently cited in the text

Introduction: Cahiers du Cinema in the 1960s

Part 1: NEW WAVE/FRENCH CINEMA

Introduction: Re-thinking and re-making French cinema

1. Luc Moullet: 'Jean-Luc Godard' (April 1960)

2. André S. Labarthe: 'The Purest Vision: Les Bonnes Femmes' (June 1960)

3. André S. Labarthe: 'Marienbad Year Zero' (September 1961)

4. Jean-Luc Godard: 'From Critic to Film-Maker': Godard in interview (December 1962)

5. Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean Domarchi, Jean-André Fieschi, Pierre Kast, André S. Labarthe, Claude Ollier, Jacques Rivette, François Weyergans: 'The Misfortunes of Muriel' (November 1963)

6. Cahiers du Cinema: 'Twenty Years of French Cinema: The Best French Films since the Liberation' (March 1965)

7. Eric Rohmer: 'The Old and the New': Rohmer in interview with Jean-Claude Biette, Jacques Bontemps, Jean-Louis Comolli (November 1965)

8. André S. Labarthe: 'Pagnol' (December 1965)

9. Jean-Louis Comolli: 'Polemic: Lelouch, or the Clear Conscience' (July 1966)

10. François Truffaut: 'Evolution of the New Wave': Truffaut in interview with Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean Narboni (May 1967)

PART 2: AMERICAN CINEMA: CELEBRATION

Introduction: The Apotheosis of mise en scene

11. Fereydoun Hoveyda: 'Nicholas Ray's Reply: Party Girl' (May 1960)

12. Michel Mourlet: 'In Defence of Violence' (May 1960)

13. Fereydoun Hoveyda: 'Sunspots' (August 1960)

14. Michel Mourlet: 'The Beauty of Knowledge: Joseph Losey' (September 1960)

15. Jean Douchet: 'Hitch and his Audience' (November 1960)

16. Jean Douchet: 'A Laboratory Art: Blind Date' (March 1961)

PART 3: AMERICAN CINEMA: REVALUATION

Introduction: Re-thinking American Cinema

17. Claude Chabrol, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Jean-Luc Godard, Pierre Kast, Luc Moullet, Jacques Rivette, François Truffaut: 'Questions about American Cinema: A Discussion' (December 1963-January 1964)

18. Jean-Louis Comolli: 'The Ironical Howard Hawks' (November 1964)

19. Claude Oilier: 'A King in New York: King Kong' (May-June 1965)

20. Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean-André Fieschi, Gérard Guégan, Michel Mardore, Claude Ollier, André Téchiné: 'Twenty Years On: A

Editorial Reviews

This isn’t simply an anthology of interesting film criticism; it’s something much more rare and intriguing—the documentary history of an important intellectual shift… The principles discovered by the Cahiers writers and developed by themselves and others irreversibly altered the way movies were seen… By treating movies as movies, not as poor relations to books or plays, the Cahiers critics helped introduce a new art form to the century that produced it.

New York Times Book Review

Wonderfully intellectual and anti-academic at the same time, the articles are, more than anything else, supremely personal… These are immensely serious people, self-consciously bent on nothing less than changing the history of cinema. In important ways they first taught us how to look at movies, especially our own.

American Film