Passion for Films: Henri Langlois and the Cinematheque Francaise - Brossura

Roud, Richard

Brossura

ISBN 10: 080186206X ISBN 13: 9780801862069

Casa editrice: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 1999

Riassunto

When Henri Langlois began collecting prints of films in the 1920s, most people - even many in the film industry - thought of movies as a cheap and disposable form of entertainment. Langlois recognized them as a priceless form of art and worthy of preservation. In 1935, he founded the Cinematheque Francaise, the legendary film library and screening room in Paris which Jean Renoir described as "the church for movies" and Bernardo Bertolucci called "the best school of cinema in the world". This is an analysis of Henri Langlois, his passion for films, and his contribution to film history.

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Recensione:

"In this most engaging biography Richard Roud draws an affectionate portrait of Henri Langlois, a co-founder and the director of the Cinémathèque Française, a film library and screening room in Paris, tracing from November 1914 when he was born in Turkey until his death in January 1977... Roud is extremely informative, telling the reader about the wide variety of activities accomplished by Langlois both in France and abroad... What gives the whole book balance and integrity is the fact that the author's focus remains on Langlois' activities as an archivist who collects and exhibits films to thepublic as opposed to an archivist who just collects and stores them in a locked place... Roud provides us with an intensely vivid and illustrative account of the man whom Truffaut once described as a man as picturesque and as contradictory as a Dickens character, and the contribution he made to film culture both in France and abroad. Theimage of Henri Langlois which emerges from this book is certainly an intriguing figure with his absolutely extraordinary passion for films." -- Sachiko Shikoda, Scope: An On-Line Journal of Film Studies

"Richard Roud has written a truly great and important book that cannot fail to be considered a major contribution to film history." -- Marcel Ophuls, American Film

"Part scholarly biography and part personal memoir... this is a good place to start learning about one of film's most charismatic figures." -- Library Journal

"A Passion for Films is a perfect title for Richard Roud's loving biography of Langlois... His book is also a personal memoir and a brief history of film archives and archivists. Most important, A Passion for Films provides an account of how Langlois virtually single-handedly created what we call today a film culture." -- Dan Isaac, New York Times Book Review

"The greatest value of this book is the clear outline it gives of Langlois's career and the history of film archives... Langlois was a flawed man and a curator who aired his films a little too boldly sometimes. But as Roud argues, he was a key instigator of the last great burst of creative energy in filmmaking: the New Wave. America has so poor a record in preserving its own films that the story of Langlois's efforts makes a great lesson." -- David Thompson, New Republic

L'autore:

Richard Roud was the director of the London Film Festival from 1960 to 1969 and the director of the New York Film Festival from its inauguration in 1963 until 1987. A film critic at the Manchester Guardian from 1963 to 1970, Roud is also the author of three books on individual directors(Max Ophuls, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jean-Marie Straub) and editor of the two-volume Cinema: A Critical Dictionary. He died in Nîmes, France, in 1989.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1999
• ISBN 10: 080186206X
• ISBN 13: 9780801862069
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 218