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| "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema" | |
|---|---|
| Title | "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema" |
| Author | Jean-Luc Godard |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Publication date | 1954 |
| Genre | Film criticism |
"A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema" is a polemical essay written by Jean-Luc Godard and published in 1954 that challenged contemporary French film practice and advocated for a radical new approach to cinematic art. The essay targeted established figures and institutions in French culture and linked cinematic form to political and aesthetic commitments, provoking debate among filmmakers, critics, and intellectuals associated with European art movements. Godard addressed practitioners and theorists of film, situating his critique within conversations involving critics, directors, and journals across Parisian and continental networks.
Godard wrote the essay while active in the milieu of Cahiers du Cinéma, associating with critics and future filmmakers such as François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, André Bazin, and Jacques Rivette. The piece appeared amid debates involving institutions like Cinémathèque Française, journals such as Les Temps Modernes and Positif, and cultural venues including Studio des Ursulines and Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. Godard framed his argument against practices exemplified by directors linked to studios like Pathé and Gaumont and referenced auteurs associated with traditions from Hollywood to Italian Neorealism. The publication coincided with broader intellectual currents involving figures like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Roland Barthes, and critics active in postwar Paris salons.
Godard's central claim was that a dominant trend in contemporary French film produced a static, literary, and theatrical cinema exemplified by directors he criticized by name and by association with institutions such as Comédie-Française productions adapted for screen. He contrasted this tendency with an insurgent cinematic practice promoted by the circle around Cahiers du Cinéma and filmmakers influenced by auteurs including Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Roberto Rossellini, Federico Fellini, and John Ford. Godard argued for emphasis on mise-en-scène, montage, and the camera's ability to think, invoking cinema histories like Soviet montage theory and referencing theorists such as Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov. He attacked what he saw as complacency in critics aligned with establishments like Le Figaro and institutions such as the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée for favoring adaptations tied to literary reputations like Marcel Proust, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, and theatrical adaptations by directors modeled on Sacha Guitry or Jean Cocteau.
The essay provoked immediate rebuttals from proponents of literary and theatrical continuity in French film, including critics publishing in Positif and filmmakers associated with producers like Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert. Public disputes took place in venues such as Cahiers du Cinéma pages, screenings at Cinémathèque Française, and debates involving intellectuals like Pierre Bourdieu later analyzing cultural fields. Supporters among young critics and directors—later figures including Claude Lanzmann and Agnès Varda—embraced Godard's polemic, while established cultural arbiters in institutions like Ministère de la Culture and journalistic outlets such as Le Monde criticized its militancy. The controversy extended to international circles, prompting commentary from critics at Sight & Sound, publications connected to New York Film Festival, and scholars at universities such as Sorbonne University.
The essay helped catalyze the auteurist revaluation promoted by Cahiers du Cinéma critics who later became directors—François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette—and fed into theoretical developments discussed alongside works by André Bazin, Louis Althusser, and Gilles Deleuze. Its insistence on directorial responsibility and formal innovation influenced critical practices at magazines like Film Comment and institutions such as British Film Institute and Museum of Modern Art film programs. The piece contributed to debates about national cinemas involving Italian Neorealism, German Expressionism, Soviet montage, and Hollywood Golden Age, informing curricula at film schools like IDHEC and later La Fémis and shaping festival programming at Cannes Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival.
Later historians and critics—from scholars at Université de Paris to writers affiliated with Film Quarterly—have revisited Godard's essay in light of auteur theory's institutionalization and the expansion of film studies as a discipline. Retrospectives at Cinémathèque Française, exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, and conferences hosted by Institut Lumière have situated the essay within trajectories connecting Nouvelle Vague filmmakers, experimental cinema activists like Chris Marker, and international auteurs such as Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa. Contemporary reassessments engage with perspectives from scholars influenced by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida and critics addressing postcolonial and feminist film studies involving voices from Ousmane Sembène to Chantal Akerman. The essay endures as a milestone in debates over form, politics, and authorship in twentieth- and twenty-first-century cinema.
Category:Film criticism essays Category:Jean-Luc Godard Category:Cahiers du Cinéma