Pages for Cinephiles

Much like its subject matter, A Short History of Cahiers du Cinéma is a compelling, highly intelligent read marred at times by a seeming identity crisis. Emilie Bickerton has done film studies a service in providing a concise, lucid, well-written narrative of the rise and fall of what is arguably the most important film journal ever. Starting with an excellent (albeit abbreviated) exploration of the roots of the journal, the book evokes post-WWII French culture, cinema, Hollywood, and the ongoing intellectual debates and movements that formed what Bickerton calls "the last modernist project." The book also does a solid job of explaining some of the journal's more controversial and influential critical approaches—the emphasis on the analysis of mise-en-scène over dialogue and thematic elements, the reevaluation of Hollywood films made under the Studio System, strengthening the relationship between theory and praxis, the turn towards structuralist and Marxist theories, the turn towards Maoism, and of course, auteur theory. This part of the book, however, feels redundant at times, as this is ground that has been well covered elsewhere.

Because this is indeed a "short history," and so much has already been written about them, Bickerton understandably does not feel obligated to provide much biographical information about the founders, now considered a Who's Who of French cinema, which included André Bazin, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and François Truffaut. She rightly steers clear of gossip in this history, but I was hoping for a little more about the disputes and disagreements within the group and amongst the succeeding editors of the journal, partly because much less is known about some of these later editors, which included Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean Narboni, Serge Daney, Serge Toubiana, and Charles Tesson. The reader looking for detailed discussion of the editorial process, of the politics and personalities involved in the changing editorial policies, will likely come away disappointed. Bickerton does touch on these areas, but the emphasis here is more on larger cultural undercurrents, movements, and ideas. We learn very little of the individual players involved, particularly as the book traces the journal's descent from the Maoist period of the 1970s through 2009 and the complete mainstreaming of its cinema coverage, or as Bickerton puts it, its "limping on today as just another banal mouthpiece for the spectacle."

The tensions felt within the offices at the Cahiers du Cinéma resonate throughout the history of popular film—the relationship between art and politics, commerce versus art, the "worth" of commercial Hollywood cinema, the balance between populism and elitism—and Bickerton does an excellent job highlighting them. Yet these tensions seem also to infect her project itself. For instance, she commends the journal's original "anti-academic" stance (as part of its larger anti-establishment agenda), yet rues its later fall into the mainstream. She laments the relegation of cinephelia to the halls of academe, which she feels has "severed the relationship between writing on film and making it," an interesting distinction when writing about a journal whose own writers were certainly never afraid to use jargon, drop names, and include the latest literary and cultural theories in their work. Perhaps infected by their spirit in spite of her concerns, she does allow herself to extol the virtues of Frederic Jameson's jargon-heavy, very academic The Geopolitical Aesthetic (1995).

The audience for this book is the big question mark. The introduction begins, "What follows is a familiar tale, and yet it has never been told," and this is the rub. Who is this book written for? For most readers, this isn't, in fact, a "familiar" tale. For specialists, it's perhaps all too familiar, and this brief book may prove unsatisfying. Bickerton is a rarity—an intellectual and a cinephile who mostly stands apart from the academic world. This position colors her consideration and ultimately shapes a project that ends up in an indeterminate place itself—not precisely suited to the needs of academics...