Cahiers du Cinema: Interviews with Film Directors, 1953-1970

brings together eighteen directors: Otto Preminger, Roberto Rossellini, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Max Ophuls, Nicholas Ray, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Michelangelo Antonioni, Carl-Theodor Dreyer, Federico Fellini, Robert Bresson, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Jean Renoir, and Eric Rohmer — who are among the leading auteurs in the history of the cinema. The interviews were all commissioned for the legendary movie journal (the oldest such French-language magazine in continuous publication), the first critical enterprise to treat films, particularly Hollywood films, as a serious art form. Co-founded in 1951 by Andre Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca, was edited, after 1957, by Rohmer himself, including among its writers (and interviewers) Jacques Rivette, Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Truffaut — all of whom went on to become highly influential filmmakers. Conducted in Cahiers famously in-depth, critical and engaged style, the interviews in this volume catch each director at a crucial juncture in his development as an artist, and stand as a historical record of the dominance of the Euro-American tradition in cinematic art. This is the first such collection of its kind in English, edited with a contextualizing introduction, critical biographies, career filmographies, and a comprehensive index by the American scholar James R. Russo.