Cahiers du cinéma

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Cahiers du cinéma

description french film magazine
language French
First edition April 1951
Frequency of publication per month
Web link cahiersducinema.com
ISSN (print) 0008-011X

Cahiers du cinéma ("Kino-Hefte") is a French film magazine that has been published monthly since April 1951 and is based in Paris . The first editors-in-chief were André Bazin and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze . Many of the magazine's young authors later became directors of the Nouvelle Vague (“New Wave”), which is one of the reasons why the film magazine is still highly regarded today.

prehistory

The prehistory of the Cahiers begins at the end of the 1920s with Jean-Georges Auriol and Denise Tual , who founded the magazine La Revue du Cinéma in 1928 , which was discontinued in 1929 after 31 issues and was published again by the two from 1946 to 1949 . In this magazine, especially in the years after the war, the attempt is made to test film-critical writing that not only sees cinema as a commercial mass event, but also seeks to understand the specific rules of cinematographic art. The focus here is particularly on dealing with avant-garde films. A second aspect of the prehistory consists of the founding of the ciné-club Objectif 49 with the participation of Jean Cocteau , Robert Bresson and Alexandre Astruc , which shows and discusses avant-garde films in Paris as well as American films by Orson Welles , John Ford and others. In 1949 the club in Biarritz organized the “Festival du film maudit” for the first time, showing films that had previously been rejected by the public and critics and which therefore could not be seen at major festivals such as Cannes . The criticism against a cinema that has become too traditional is already clearly formulated here. After Jean-Georges Auriol was killed in a car accident in 1950, André Bazin and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze tried to found a new magazine in his memory: the Cahiers du Cinéma appeared for the first time in April 1951.

The 1950s

In the 1950s, the later film directors of the Nouvelle Vague belonged to the editorial team of the Cahiers: François Truffaut , Claude Chabrol , Éric Rohmer , Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard .

They developed the concept of the Politique des auteurs , which is often misleadingly referred to in German as the author's theory. She posits that the real writer of a film is the director and not the scriptwriter, the stars or the entire film team.

The critics, often referred to as “jeunes Turcs” ( Young Turks ), advocated the Hollywood films, which were viewed rather skewfully by intellectuals at the time, and for films of Italian neorealism .

During the German occupation (1940–1944) no American films were shown in France at all. Therefore, from 1944 onwards, the French were able to see practically the entire war production of the American film industry and were suddenly able to compare them with the films that were shown during the war years.

Above all, the "tradition de la qualité" of French cinema was opposed, such as B. the films by Claude Autant-Lara or Jean Delannoy . These films were mostly bloodless studio productions that were often adaptations of well-known literary works. The article A certain tendency in French films (Une certaine tendance du cinéma français) by François Truffaut, published in no.31 in January 1954, caused a stir . Truffaut primarily dealt with the adaptation of literary works by the scriptwriting team Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost . Truffaut explained in detail how the team of authors systematically falsified the spirit of the original and spiced the script with blasphemous and sexual cues at will to achieve a cheap provocation.

The Cahiers critics were the first to systematically conduct lengthy interviews with directors they particularly value, such as B. Howard Hawks , Alfred Hitchcock , Jean Renoir , Roberto Rossellini and Orson Welles . This only became possible with the introduction of portable tape recorders. These interviews are still being published today.

Again and again they threw themselves happily into skirmishes with colleagues from Positif , who steered a much more political course.

At the end of the 1950s, the jeunes turcs finally had the opportunity to make films themselves. Only Rivette and Rohmer, who had been editor-in-chief since 1957, were still associated with the magazine as employees. In the early 1960s, it became increasingly difficult to emancipate the magazine from the Nouvelle Vague. While Rohmer propagated a classic cinema and wanted to be independent of the Nouvelle Vague, Rivette took the position that one had to give journalistic support to the Nouvelle Vague, which had become somewhat paralyzed.

The 1960s and 1970s

The dispute escalated in June 1963 when both groups separately conceived the next edition of the Cahiers. Rivette prevails (No. 145, July 1963) and is from now on the unofficial editor-in-chief of the magazine. The number of pages is increased and the view is broadened to include neighboring areas, such as music, philosophy and sociology. a. manifested in interviews with Roland Barthes or Pierre Boulez . In keeping with the zeitgeist, the Cahiers are becoming more and more politicized.

At the end of the 1960s the tone became increasingly esoteric, interspersed with Marxist, sociological and structuralist vocabulary. There are only texts, no more pictures. The Maoists have prevailed in the editorial office. The readership was increasingly pissed off by a jargon that was only understandable to a small circle. Nevertheless, the Cahiers manage to remain the leading medium of the scientific film discussion. There are basic texts such as Jean-Pierre Oudart's La suture . The circulation is falling drastically and the frequency of publication is becoming more and more sporadic. Only a financial commitment from Truffaut, who still holds shares, prevented the magazine from being discontinued.

It wasn't until the late 1970s that a broader audience was addressed again, but the time of great, decisive debates is irrevocably over. There is particular interest in French film. There are always large dossiers on the now canonized classics of film history and long interviews. But also more distant film countries such as Hong Kong , India or the People's Republic of China are often the subject of dossiers or special issues.

1980s until today

Since the beginning of the 1980s there has been a separate publishing house for film books , which has already published well over a hundred titles.

Even in the 21st century there are always existential crises , most recently in 2003 when the cahiers were almost liquidated by the new owner , the newspaper Le Monde . The editor-in-chief from September 2003 to 2009 was Jean-Michel Frodon , who came from Le Monde . This change made many doubt whether the magazine could still maintain its old level. In 2009, Frodon was replaced by Stéphane Delorme , who is editor-in-chief of Le Cahiers to this day.

The cahiers are still the focal point for film directors from all over the world. At over 50, they are an unusual age for a film magazine. Only a few film magazines like the British Sight & Sound or the German film service appear longer.

The Cahiers website, which was started with great ambitions and articles written especially for the web, contained only the table of contents of the current edition for a long time after a long (probably financially justified) downtime . Since June 2005 the site has been a bit more informative after a relaunch . Some articles from old editions have also been put online . Since March 2007 the magazine has been published simultaneously in English (as was the case for a short time in the 1960s).

In 2008 the Cahiers du Cinema published a list of - in their opinion - 100 best films of all time. The first positions were Citizen Kane (1st place), The night of the hunter (2nd place), The rules of the game (3rd place), Sunrise - Song of two people (4th place), Atalante (5th place), M - A city is looking for one Murderer (6th place), Singin 'In The Rain (7th place), Vertigo - From the Realm of the Dead (8th place), Children of Olympus (9th place) and The Black Falcon (10th place).

literature

  • Antoine de Baecque: Les Cahiers du Cinéma. Histoire d'une review. 2 volumes. Editions Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris 1991 ISBN 2-86642-109-4
  • Markus Moninger: Film criticism in a crisis. The “politique des auteurs”. Narr, Tübingen 1992, ISBN 3-8233-4280-0
  • Emilie Bickerton: A Brief History of the Cahiers du cinéma . diaphanes, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-03734-126-1
  • Album of the 50 ans de «Cahiers du cinema». Cahiers du cinema livres, Paris 1980 ISBN 2-86642-298-8
    • Anniversary edition as a booklet: 50 ans de «Cahiers du cinema». N ° 556, Paris 2001

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cahiers du Cinema: 100 Films ( Memento of January 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
  2. ↑ extensive and well-founded history of the Cahiers
  3. ↑ On the film theoretical foundations of the critics in the Cahiers and the influence of their writings on the Nouvelle Vague
  4. ↑ 288 pages
  5. ↑ 128 pages