The Film Theory of Jean Mitry

Abstract

Jean Mitry ushered in a whole new era of film theory with his immense two-volume treatise, Esthetique et psychologie du cinema (1963-65). It is ironic that contemporary film theory should have its start in this man who was himself the contemporary and associate of figures like Jean Epstein, Abel Gance, and Jean Renoir. Indeed Mitry's first film book was a study of the actor Emil Jannings, who was at that time (1928) in mid-career. Mitry lived and labored in that golden age of silent cinema so beloved of Arnheim, Balazs, and countless others. Somehow his critical mind has conquered what must be a nearly irresistible pull toward nostalgia and a film theory based on the supremacy of those wonderful films of the twenties, for he has written a remarkably modern theory. Three aspects of Mitry's life have contributed to his critical distance. First, he began by actually working on films during the French avantgarde era. Even after the fall of this movement he has stayed close to film production, editing such films as Astruc's prize-winning short La Rideau Cramoisie (1953), filming and editing his own prize-winners in Pacific 231 (1949) and Images pour Debussy (1952). These all have something of the experimental about them and forced him at the very outset to bring to bear on his own work some sophisticated ideas about editing, music, the status of the image, and adaptation. The closeness of Mitry's film theory to film making practice arises from these kinds of working experiences. Only Eisenstein exceeds him in time and energy spent in editing rooms. The second aspect of Mitry's life and personality which suits him so perfectly to his task is his penchant for history. Even during his years in the French avant-garde he was busily collecting data and notes which might be of use to him later on. His files, already sizeable in the 1930's, were immeasurably augmented when he, along with Henry Langlois and Georges Franju, founded the Cinematheque francaise in 1938. Of course this has since become the greatest storehouse of films and film data in the world. During the war Mitry devised the notion of writing a truly scientific history of the cinema, a history which would document the art and which would pose the most important questions raised by it. In the past decade he has at last begun publishing this Histoire du cinema, now four volumes long and yet to reach Citizen Kane. Anyone thumbing through the 900 pages of his theory books will instantly recognize the historian behind the theorist, for countless precise examples seep out of every page. This attitude toward