Frederic Raphael

‘We’ll always have Paris’

The long war between France and the US has its liveliest consequence in the world of film: Hollywood does movies, the French do cinema.

The long war between France and the US has its liveliest consequence in the world of film: Hollywood does movies, the French do cinema. In terms of equipment, the Yanks were the pioneers, but France’s Charles Pathé was the first tycoon and — more importantly — George Méliès was the inventor, by accident, of the method of cutting from scene to scene which has become the signal contribution of cinema to narrative.

After the invention of talkies, Hollywood pulled out of sight and sound of its panting pursuers, but the French have remained obstinately inventive and creatively resentful: they harbour an abiding sense of having been robbed of an art form which has been degraded by Californian philistines. Only a few American directors (and Alfred Hitchcock) were dubbed auteurs by François Truffaut and his chums at Cahiers du Cinéma when, in the 1950s and onwards, they attempted the coup which would make them self-appointed arbiters of cinematic merit (poor Vincente Minnelli fell off their train, because he was such a poor subject for interview).

Charles Drazin traces the unparallel histories of the development of the movies ici et là. In terms of organisation, volume and commercial clout, Hollywood clearly won the war. But the French resistance has engendered a series of memorable films. Quality has been the best revenge. Yet it was precisely the tradition of classy, literate films, such as those directed by Julien Duvivier, which Truffaut attacked in his explosive article ‘Une certaine tendance dans le cinéma français’. Truffaut and his friends affected to be mounting a critical revolution, but their politique des copains was more of a putsch than an aesthetic.

Their smart purpose was to discomfit the old guard and replace the movies of the professionals who merely told a story, and relied on stars, with something within their own means, technical and financial.

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