The secret behind fear
(Le secret derrière la peur by Pascal Kane - Cahiers du Cinema 253, October-November 1974)
There would be little to say about this mediocre product if its success, considerable in the United States and fledgling in France, did not make it a privileged symptom [of current cinema]. Faced with the spectre of the 1930s and the Great Depression, which is more topical than ever, the bourgeoisie has, as you might expect, its answers on every front.…
The dissection table
(La table de dissection by Pascal Bonitzer - Cahiers du Cinema 253, October-November 1974)
When talking about Bunuel's The Phantom of Liberty it is difficult to not mention his surrealist origins; unfortunately, this is the surest way to say nothing about it, only nonsense. Perhaps in a spirit of contradiction, I find, on the contrary, that what is striking in Bunuel's cinema, and in this film as in the previous ones, is his realism. Not just any…
L' hélice et l'idée by Eric Rohmer (Cahiers du Cinema, March 1959, N° 93)
Itself, by itself, solely ONE everlastingly, and single. – Plato
We would have gladly pardoned Alfred Hitchcock for following the austere The Wrong Man with a lighter work, more of a crowd pleaser. Such was perhaps his intention when he decided to bring the novel by Boileau and Narcejac, D’entre les morts, to the screen. Now, the esoteric nature of Vertigo, so they say, repelled Americans.…
Eric Rohmer: 'The Land of Miracles'
('La Terre du Miracle', Cahiers du Cinema 47, May 1955, written under his real name, Maurice Scherer)
The term 'neo-realism' has become so debased that I would hesitate to use it in relation to Viaggio in Italia if Rossellini hadn't in fact claimed it himself. He sees this film as embodying a 'neo-realism' that is purer and deeper than in any of his earlier films. At least that was his comment to one member…
