Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgments Books frequently cited in the text Introduction: Cahiers du Cinema in the 1960s Part 1: NEW WAVE/FRENCH CINEMA Introduction: Re-thinking and re-making French cinema 1. Luc Moullet: 'Jean-Luc Godard' (April 1960) 2. Andre S. Labarthe: 'The Purest Vision: Les Bonnes Femmes' (June 1960) 3. Andre S. Labarthe: 'Marienbad Year Zero' (September 1961) 4. Jean-Luc Godard: 'From Critic to Film-Maker': Godard in interview (December 1962) 5. Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean Domarchi, Jean-Andre Fieschi, Pierre Kast, Andre S. Labarthe, Claude Ollier, Jacques Rivette, Francois Weyergans: 'The Misfortunes of Muriel' (November 1963) 6. Cahiers du Cinema: 'Twenty Years of French Cinema: The Best French Films since the Liberation' (March 1965) 7. Eric Rohmer: 'The Old and the New': Rohmer in interview with Jean-Claude Biette, Jacques Bontemps, Jean-Louis Comolli (November 1965) 8. Andre S. Labarthe: 'Pagnol' (December 1965) 9. Jean-Louis Comolli: 'Polemic: Lelouch, or the Clear Conscience' (July 1966) 10. Francois Truffaut: 'Evolution of the New Wave': Truffaut in interview with Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean Narboni (May 1967) PART 2: AMERICAN CINEMA: CELEBRATION Introduction: The Apotheosis of mise en scene 11. Fereydoun Hoveyda: 'Nicholas Ray's Reply: Party Girl' (May 1960) 12. Michel Mourlet: 'In Defence of Violence' (May 1960) 13. Fereydoun Hoveyda: 'Sunspots' (August 1960) 14. Michel Mourlet: 'The Beauty of Knowledge: Joseph Losey' (September 1960) 15. Jean Douchet: 'Hitch and his Audience' (November 1960) 16. Jean Douchet: 'A Laboratory Art: Blind Date' (March 1961) PART 3: AMERICAN CINEMA: REVALUATION Introduction: Re-thinking American Cinema 17. Claude Chabrol, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Jean-Luc Godard, Pierre Kast, Luc Moullet, Jacques Rivette, Francois Truffaut: 'Questions about American Cinema: A Discussion' (December 1963-January 1964) 18. Jean-Louis Comolli: 'The Ironical Howard Hawks' (November 1964) 19. Claude Oilier: 'A King in New York: King Kong' (May-June 1965) 20. Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean-Andre Fieschi, Gerard Guegan, Michel Mardore, Claude Ollier, Andre Techine: 'Twenty Years On: A

About the Author

Jim Hillier is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Bulmershe College of Higher Education, Reading, England.

Reviews

This isn’t simply an anthology of interesting film criticism; it’s something much more rare and intriguing—the documentary history of an important intellectual shift… The principles discovered by the Cahiers writers and developed by themselves and others irreversibly altered the way movies were seen… By treating movies as movies, not as poor relations to books or plays, the Cahiers critics helped introduce a new art form to the century that produced it.
*New York Times Book Review*

Wonderfully intellectual and anti-academic at the same time, the articles are, more than anything else, supremely personal… These are immensely serious people, self-consciously bent on nothing less than changing the history of cinema. In important ways they first taught us how to look at movies, especially our own.
*American Film*