On the Threshold of French Film Theory and Criticism, 1915-1919

Abstract

This essay is conceived as an archeological project whose site encompasses some of the earliest writing on the cinema.' In the following pages, I mean to excavate the period of 1915 to 1919 and resurrect the significant texts that intersected with-and sought to either determine or respond to-the historical development of the cinema in France. Although it covers a good number of the same texts, this essay differs substantially from Stuart Liebman's French Film Theory, 1910-1921, Quarterly Review of Film Studies (Winter, 1983). There Liebman is concerned with postulating an ur-theory, a set of shared assumptions, which underlie most of the writing of the period.2 Here, by contrast, I wish to lay bare the multiplicity of that writing, to open up a space for the performance of voices, both recognized and unrecognized-e.g., Louis Delluc and Emile Vuillermoz-banded together or separate, all of them competing for dominance. And, I hope to tease out the network or tissue of discursive and non-discursive practices in society (economic, political, technological, educational, aesthetic) out of which a theory and criticism emerged and within which it remained partially enmeshed; and, to put in play what became, during this period, a quasi-autonomous discourse-namely, film theory and criticism-a discourse with its own subject, loosely defined methodologies, and not always coherent manner of articulation. The result should be both the writing of history and the unearthing of an archive for further study and re-writing.