Film Comment (2001) - Cahiers Back in the Day
Details
- magazine article: Cahiers Back in the Day
- author(s): Dave Kehr
- journal: Film Comment (01/Sep/2001)
- issue: volume 37, issue 5, page 30
- journal ISSN: 0015-119X
- publisher: Film Society of Lincoln Center
- keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, André Bazin, Anniversaries, Cahiers du Cinéma, Claude Chabrol, Criticism and interpretation, Dramatic arts, Film, Film criticism, Filmmakers, France, François Truffaut, French, French literature, History, Ida Lupino, Influence, Laurence Olivier, Louis Alexandre Raimon, Magazines, Motion pictures, North by Northwest (1959), Pascal Bonitzer, Periodicals, Éric Rohmer
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Abstract
Arguably the most influential publication in the short history of movies, "Cahiers du Cinema" is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The first issue of the magazine was dated Apr 1951 and featured a black and white still portrait of Gloria Swanson from Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard."
Article
Cahiers Back in the Day
Arguably the most influential publication in the short history of the movies, Cahiers du Cinema is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
The first issue of Cahiers du Cinema was dated April 1951 and featured on its cover a black-and-white still of Gloria Swanson, bathed in the beam of an unseen movie projector, from Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard.
The choice seems ironic now, given that neither Wilder nor the silent cinema as embodied by Swanson remained a Cahiers favorite for very long.
Though Wilder was much admired by the magazine's founders - Jacques Doniol-- Valcroze, Lo Duca, and Andre Bazin - his work was typed as too literary by the generation of "Jeunes Turcs" who quickly took over the magazine. Under the leadership of one Maurice Scherer, who became better known under his pseudonym, Eric Rohmer, the group included Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, and Jean-Luc Godard- the core of the movement that, when these young writers reinvented themselves as filmmakers, became known as the Nouvelle Vague.
No doubt, it was the instant notoriety and almost universal acclaim that greeted the New Wave filmmakers as each, in turn, made their debut features in the late Fifties that cemented the magazine's reputation. Cahiers became known as an almost mythical breeding ground for new talent, a reputation that extended far beyond the directors of the New Wave to include such contemporary talents as Andre Techine, Leos Carax, and Olivier Assayas, all of whom first ventured into print as Cahiers critics.
But the magazine's lasting impact is due less to the talent it bred than the ideas it hatched and successfully implanted in...
