A Museum of Moving Images: Mid-Twentieth-Century Art Documentaries on the Louvre

Abstract

Apart from a spectacular site in many fiction films, the Louvre museum has been the subject of some remarkable art documentaries. This article focuses on four films, made between the late 1930s and early 1950s, which deal with the famous Paris museum or parts of its collection: Rubens et son temps (Jacques Jaujard and Rene Huyghe, 1938), Les Femmes du Louvre (Pierre Kast, 1951), Images de l'ancienne Egypte (Maurice Cloche, 1951), and Les Pierres vives (Fernand Marzelle, 1951). Fallen into oblivion and overlooked by both art-historical and film-historical scholarship, these intriguing short films cannot be disconnected from the changes that museums in general and the Louvre in particular underwent in that era. In addition, this article situates these films in the context of a 'Golden Age' of lyrical art documentaries, their production made possible by new international organizations such as ICOM and FIFA, in which the Louvre played an important part.