Cahiers du cinéma

Contents

Cahiers du cinéma is a French film magazine founded in 1951 that became a leading voice in postwar France and international cinema discourse, shaping debates among critics, filmmakers, and scholars. Emerging in the milieu of Paris intellectual life alongside journals such as Les Temps Modernes and La Nouvelle Revue Française, it connected younger critics to directors of the Italian neorealism and Hollywood Golden Age, while engaging with festivals like the Cannes Film Festival and institutions such as the Cinémathèque Française.

History

Founded by critics and cinephiles in 1951, the magazine appeared during the era of Fourth French Republic political reconstruction and cultural reassessment influenced by figures associated with Cahiers-adjacent circles in Postwar Europe. Early issues debated auteurs from Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Carol Reed and the auteurs of Italian Neorealism including Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini. The journal's early pages juxtaposed analyses of works by Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Jean Renoir, Max Ophüls and Jacques Tati with polemics directed at institutional programming at venues such as the Musée du Louvre film series and retrospectives at the British Film Institute. Through the 1950s and 1960s it engaged with movements like the French New Wave and international auteurs such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette while responding to currents from Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray and Andrei Tarkovsky. During the 1970s and 1980s its pages reflected debates tied to the aftermath of May 1968, the politics of Gauche prolétarienne-era cultural policy, and shifting relations with festivals including Venice Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival.

The editorial line combined auteurist advocacy for directors like Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks and Orson Welles with theoretical engagement influenced by thinkers associated with Structuralism, Marxism and later Psychoanalysis—figures such as Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan and Jean-Paul Sartre appeared in adjacent debates. The magazine championed directorial authorship as seen in analyses of films by François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman and Fritz Lang, while contesting institutional programming at bodies like the Cinémathèque Française and promoting younger talents showcased at the Cannes Film Festival and Semaine de la Critique. Its pages became a forum where theories from Semiotics advocates such as Algirdas Greimas and critics drawing on Gilles Deleuze met practical criticism on works by Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini and Sergio Leone, shaping curricula at institutions like Université Paris VIII and influencing film studies programs established in United States universities including University of Southern California and New York University.

The magazine served as the launching pad for critics-turned-filmmakers and theorists including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and André Bazin; it also published writing by intellectuals connected to Les Temps Modernes and figures such as Roland Barthes and Louis Althusser. Later contributors and editors included critics, scholars and filmmakers who debated aesthetics alongside contemporaries from Italy, United Kingdom and United States—figures linked to festivals like Cannes Film Festival, academies like La Sorbonne and archives such as the Cinémathèque Française. Regular correspondents and guest writers examined films by Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder, and the magazine fostered networks with curators at the British Film Institute and programmers at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The journal provoked controversies over auteur theory versus sociological and political approaches to cinema, sparking polemics with critics influenced by Marxism, Feminism and Structuralism and generating exchanges involving figures from May 1968 intellectual circles, commentators linked to Jean-Paul Sartre, and scholars influenced by Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze. Debates targeted canonical assessments of directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, John Ford, Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, and clashed with institutional programming at the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival and national film bodies in France and Italy. Critical responses also addressed the magazine's stance during periods of political radicalization in the 1970s, the rise of new waves in Brazil and Japan, and controversies around restoration practices at archives like the Cinémathèque Française and curatorial decisions at the Museum of Modern Art.

Its legacy includes codifying auteurist vocabulary that reshaped criticism of directors including Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa and Orson Welles, influencing programming at archives such as the Cinémathèque Française and the British Film Institute, and informing film studies at universities like Université Paris VIII, University of Southern California and New York University. The magazine's debates reverberated through academic work by scholars associated with Film Theory movements in United States and Europe, affected festival circuits at Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival, and helped launch filmmakers from the French New Wave into international prominence while shaping retrospectives at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art.

Category:French film magazines