A Short History of Cahiers du Cinema by Emilie Bickerton

Author:Emilie Bickerton [Bickerton, Emilie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781844677603
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2014-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Gods of the Plague (1969)

5

1969–1973

Red Notebooks

Daniel Filipacchi had owned Cahiers since 1964. The publisher had made few editorial demands during that time. But as the journal’s line hardened against everything the millionaire publisher stood for, his position at Cahiers became increasingly untenable. When he opened number 216 he found the Althusserian editorial by Comolli and Narboni announcing their determination to fight the capitalist structures which Cahiers was subject to—in other words, Filipacchi himself. Turning the page he was met by Raymond Bellour’s shot-by-shot breakdown of Tippi Hedren’s eventful boat ride in The Birds. The package was too much: direct attack from editors, a cinematic masterpiece chopped up and coded, its suspense communicated to readers in the following prose: ‘she goes from shots 15–31 (A1: the approach to the dinghy driven by Melanie to the pier by Brenner’s house; A2: Melanie’s move towards the house), to the return of shots 37–56’. When the following issue showed no softening of its line—an editorial promised that the journal would, under no circumstances, compromise its objectives—Filipacchi put Cahiers up for sale.

The disintegration of relations with the publisher led to a collective solution between editors and fellow-travellers, initiated by Truffaut and Doniol-Valcroze. The old guard contributed the majority of funds necessary to buy the journal; current editors and friends put up the rest. In March 1970 a newly independent Cahiers re-emerged. The effort to save the journal had brought together the founding generation as well as current editors, but it was the final joint venture of its kind. The opening editorial in the first autonomous issue made no attempt to include discrepant approaches or outlooks. Comolli and Narboni were unequivocal: Cahiers’ focus must remain steadily on theoretical elaboration, founded on the ‘Marxist science of historical materialism and the principles of dialectical materialism’. Relations with the first Cahiers generation quickly broke down: as early as October 1970 Truffaut had his name removed from the masthead. The following month Cahiers published extracts from statements he had made to another publication, La Vie Lyonnaise, explaining the reasons for his departure:

It is not a disagreement. It is simply that my name in the journal no longer stood for anything. It was quite different in the days when I worked at Cahiers. We discussed films in purely aesthetic terms. Nowadays, Cahiers has become quite openly political. Editors produce Marxist–Leninist interpretations of films. Nobody except academics can read the journal. As for me, I’ve never read a line by Marx. But they are doing good work, and they put together substantial reports. Their publication of Eisenstein’s writings is excellent.87

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