The writings of one of the greatest film critics of his generation on the auteur approach of the French New Wave to a more structural examination of film.
One of the greatest film critics of his generation, Serge Daney wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma before becoming a journalist for the daily newspaper Libération. The writings collected in this volume reflect Daney’s evolving interests, from the auteur approach of the French New Wave to a more structural examination of film, psychoanalysis, and popular culture. Openly gay throughout his lifetime, Daney rarely wrote explicitly about homosexuality but his writings reflect a queer sensibility that would influence future generations. In regular intellectual exchanges with Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Roland Barthes, Daney wrote about cinema autobiographically, while lyrically analyzing the transition from modern cinema to postmodern media. A noted polymath, Daney also published books about tennis and Haiti’s notorious Duvalier regime. His criticism is open and challenging, polyvocal and compulsively readable.
ISBN-13: 9781635901610
Media Type: Hardcover
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication Date: 09-06-2022
Pages: 616
Product Dimensions: 6.31(w) x 9.31(h) x 1.51(d)
Series: Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents
Serge Daney became the editor of Cahiers du Cinema in 1974. In 1981, he left Cahiers and wrote about visual culture for Libération, turning his attention to television and coverage of the Gulf War. He collaborated with Claire Denis on a documentary film, Jacques Rivette, le veilleur (1990). He died of AIDS-related causes in 1992.
A. S. Hamrah is a writer living in Brooklyn. He contributed a column on film to n+1 from 2008 to 2019, and his essays and reviews have appeared in Harper's, Bookforum, Cineaste, and other publications. His first book, The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002–2018, was published by n+1 Books in 2018.
What People are Saying About This
From the Publisher
"Serge Daney was the end of criticism as I understood it."
—Jean-Luc Godard
"Serge Daney was the key French film critic of his era. His untimely death in 1992 at 48, from AIDS, robbed international cinema of its most important critical voice. Despite his achievements as a writer and editor, little of Daney’s work has been published in English. The Cinema House and the World: The Cahiers du Cinéma Years, 1962–1981 covers Daney’s years as a contributor and editor at the magazine that launched the French New Wave. It is about time English-language readers had access to the full range of Daney’s thought and his unparalleled work on cinema. His prose, with its keen insights into individual films and the cinema as concept and practice, is original and transformative, a must-read for serious cinephiles and anyone else who believes in the ongoing tale of cinema."
—A. S. Hamrah
"Perched well above cinema studies, Serge Daney wrote and spoke of films in thrilling sentences, unrivalled in insight, moral fervor and sheer genius. Easily the best critic of his day."
—Dudley Andrew, Yale University
"Serge Daney knew something about cinema that no one else knew."
—Olivier Assayas
Show More
Table of Contents
Introduction by A. S. Hamrah: Cinema Is Never on Time ix
Preface Patrice Rollet 3
Cahiers du Cinéma 1968-1977 13
Interview Serge Daney Bill Krohn
Part 1 In Films' Wake 29
Part 2 Auteur Theory 287
Part 3 The Critical Function 329
Part 4 Elaborations 359
Part 5 Image-Proof 383
Part 6 Here and Elsewhere 397
Part 7 Answering Machine Chronicle 551
Part 8 Volleys 563
Index 573
Show More
