Henri Langlois

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Henri Langlois (born November 13, 1914 in Smyrna , today İzmir , † January 13, 1977 in Paris ) was an important film archivist and the founder and long-time director of the Cinémathèque Française .

life and work

Henri Langlois was born as the son of a French journalist in the Ottoman Empire , attended the Lycée Condorcet in Paris in his youth and then pursued a career as a journalist - without having finished school with a baccalauréat . He was already interested in the art of film in his youth . This enthusiasm was initially expressed in collecting rare copies - especially of films with Charles Chaplin and Fritz Lang . After he founded the Cercle du cinèma , he founded the Paris-based Cinémathèque Française , a film archive , museum and theater, together with Georges Franju and Jean Mitry in 1935 . Under the direction of Langlois and with the financial support of Paul-Auguste Harlé , this institution began to collect, preserve and exhibit everything related to film and cinema. In addition to film copies, this included cameras, projectors, posters, books, props and other items of film historical importance. Langlois and his employees procured film copies etc. a. at flea markets; In some cases they were able to save film material from being processed into nail polish or shoe wax or, in the case of silver nitrate copies, from being used to extract silver .

Under his leadership, the work of the Cinémathèque was strongly influenced by Langlois' "freehand" style. For a long time there were no inventories that would have met professional standards because Langlois had everything in his head. In addition, proper storage was not always emphasized. And with the consequence that a number of film copies rot or fell victim to a fire. The management structure was also unconventional: Langlois didn't let anyone look at his cards: he had his wife Mary Meerson , Lotte Eisner and Marie Epstein, sister of the director Jean Epstein , as an inner circle around him.

The increasing importance of the Cinémathèque as the “memory of the cinema” was not affected by these conditions. During the occupation of France by the German troops in World War II , for example, numerous films were saved from access by the occupiers. The holdings of old films also had an enormous effect on the work of the directors of the Nouvelle Vague (including François Truffaut , Jean-Luc Godard , Claude Chabrol and Alain Resnais ). Some of them were therefore called les enfants de la cinémathèque (Children of the Cinémathèque) .

The then culture minister, the writer André Malraux , took Langlois' idiosyncratic management style as an opportunity in 1968 to cut state subsidies for the Cinémathèque. The aim of this action, namely the dismissal of Langlois, could not be achieved by Malraux. The Cinémathèque was closed for some time. With the significant participation of Alain Resnais, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Léaud , Claude Jade , Jean-Luc Godard and other greats of the cinema, massive protests and even a brief interruption of the Cannes Film Festival broke out . Malraux finally had to give in. This so-called "Langlois Affair" was later immortalized in several films, for example in the opening credits of Truffaut's Robbery Kisses and in Bertolucci's Die Träumer .

The documentary film Henri Langlois, shot in 1970, provides information about Langlois' life's work . In interviews they express themselves a. Ingrid Bergman , Lillian Gish , François Truffaut, Catherine Deneuve and Jeanne Moreau . In 1974 Langlois received an honorary Oscar for his life's work .

Henri Langlois died of heart failure on January 13, 1977 and was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris . In the same year he was posthumously awarded the Honorary Prize of César .

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Langlois, Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French film archive
DATE OF BIRTH November 13, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Smyrna , now İzmir , Turkey
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1977
Place of death Paris , France