It needs to be said that anyone that has followed Ciment over the years, or is just familiar with him, will already be familiar with a lot of what he has to say, his taste and views. But regardless there is still a lot of new writing and anecdotes that are really interesting to read, and so is his passionate and ever combative spirit and prose. Le cinéma en partage even comes with the rare Simone Lainé documentary of the same titles, which has been for too long inaccessible, which provides a fascinating inside look at his routine activities.
Le cinéma en partage
is especially interesting as it reads like an audio-commentary to his
illustrious career where through its near 400 pages, each of his activities, publications, documentaries, thoughts on film criticism and its culture is discussed at length. Even though Ciment talks about an early Truffaut and
Rivette influence, he is situated more along the third generation Positif critics Roger Tailleur and
Robert Benayoun (who get a dedication), who were returning to the
more positive approach closer to
Bernard Chardère, in contrast to the stricter Marxist second generation critics, Ado
Kyrou and Louis Seguin. Having been a film critic at Positif since the early Sixties (cf. his first review of The Trial), Ciment is full
of interesting knowledge about film history, cinephilia and French film
criticism. And little hidden secrets are casually dropped throughout the book: an
argument with Andrew Sarris about the merits of Scarecrow, Robert Bresson at public talk where he’s
more affable (which appears in Bresson
on Bresson), Truffaut’s regrettable
early affinity with the Nazi sympathizer Lucien Rebatet, or Kubrick personally
ordering 400 copies of his book from him …
Ciment, and many of the other Positif critics, offer a unique approach to cinema in their writing and
through their activities. I think Antoine de Baecque and Philippe Chevalier are wrong
for not including him in their Dictionnaire
de la pensée du cinéma. At Positif
cinema and its history is taken seriously and is an instrument of social
protest, imagination, and is popular.
Michel Ciment will be in Toronto the weekend of November 8th
to present a couple of Stanley Kubrick films at the TIFF Bell Lightbox to coincide with their new exhibition.
Here at Toronto Film Review we wish
him a giant welcome!
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