Serge Daney: Stalker
(First published in Libération on November 20th, 1981. Republished in Ciné-journal 1981-1986, Cahiers du cinéma, 1986)

Stalker is a Soviet film (it is Tarkovsky's sixth and, in my opinion, his best) but "to stalk" is an English verb (and a regular one at that). To be precise, to stalk is to "pursue at close range," a way of closing in, a walk, almost a dance. In "stalking" the part of the body which is afraid lags behind…

Serge Daney: The Go-Between
(Serge Daney: "Le messager", Cahiers du cinéma n° 231, August-September 1971)

1. That The Go-Between won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival is only insignificant in appearance. If the film teaches nothing new about Joseph Losey, its success and the approving murmur around its release should prompt a few questions. For example: what is an academic film today? Or: how to tell a story in 1971 and be loved by film festivals?

2. Answering this…

Jacques Rivette, "On Abjection"
(Jacques Rivette, "De l'abjection", Cahiers du cinéma, n° 120, June 1961)

The least that one can say is that it's difficult, when one takes on a film on such a subject (the concentration camps), not to ask oneself certain preliminary questions; yet everything happens as though, due to incoherence, inanity, or cowardice, Pontecorvo resolutely neglected to ask them.

For example, that of realism: for so many reasons, all quite easy to understand, total realism -- or…

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…