Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma is an influential
French film magazine founded in
1951 by
André Bazin,
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and
Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine
Revue du Cinéma and involved members of two Paris film clubs —
Objectif 49 (
Robert Bresson,
Jean Cocteau and
Alexandre Astruc, among others) and
Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin. Initially edited by
Éric Rohmer (aka, Maurice Scherer), it included amongst its writers
Jacques Rivette,
Jean-Luc Godard,
Claude Chabrol and
François Truffaut.
Cahiers re-invented the basic tenets of
film criticism and
theory. A 1954 article by Truffaut attacked
La qualité française (the "Tradition of Quality") and formed the manifesto for the
auteur theory — resulting in the reevaluation of
Hollywood films and directors such as
Alfred Hitchcock,
Howard Hawks,
Robert Aldrich,
Nicholas Ray,
Fritz Lang, and
Anthony Mann.
Cahiers authors also championed the work of directors
Jean Renoir,
Roberto Rossellini,
Kenji Mizoguchi,
Max Ophuls, and
Jean Cocteau and often centered their evaluations on a film's
mise en scène. The magazine was also essential to the creation of the
Nouvelle Vague, or New Wave, of French cinema, which centered around films directed by
Cahiers authors such as Godard and Truffaut.
The replacement as editor of Rohmer by Jacques Rivette in
1963 signalled a shift to political and social concerns as well as responding more to non-Hollywood films. The style moved through literary modernism in the early
1960s to radicalism and
dialectical materialism by 1970. Moreover, during the mid-70s the magazine was run by a
Maoist collective. A return to more commercial perspectives in the late
1970s was marked by a review of
Jaws and a turnover of editors (
Serge Daney,
Serge Toubiana,
Thierry Jousse,
Antoine de Baecque, and
Charles Tesson). It led to the rehabilitation of some of the old
Cahiers favourites, as well as some new names like
Manoel de Oliveira,
Raoul Ruiz,
Hou Hsiao-Hsien,
Youssef Chahine, and
Maurice Pialat. Recent writers have included
Serge Daney, Serge Toubiana, Thierry Jousse, Antoine de Baecque, Vincent Ostria, Charles Tesson and
Franck Nouchi,
Andre Téchiné,
Léos Carax,
Olivier Assayas,
Danièle Dubroux, and
Serge Le Péron.
In
1998, the Editions de l'Etoile (the company publishing
Cahiers) was acquired by the press group
Le Monde.
*
Official website*
Archives*
Top 10 list (for years 1951, 1955–1968, 1981–2002)
