Iconic French film critic and historian Michel Ciment has died, his entourage confirmed on Monday evening to French radio station France Inter, home to his world-renowned radio show Le Masque et la Plume since 1970. He was 85.
Born in 1938 in Paris, Ciment devoted his life to cinema and became a pillar of French film criticism and history for more than half a century.
He served as a juror at major festivals including Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Locarno and received numerous French civic honours including the Legion of Honour, National Order of Merit, and Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters.
He was editor of the highly influential film magazine Positif which he joined in 1963 with an article on Orson Welles, and authored numerous books on cinema about well-known directors such as Fritz Lang, Jane Campion and Elia Kazan.
Ciment’s 2022 book Passport To Hollywood included interviews with Billy Wilder, John Huston, Joseph Mankiewicz, Roman Polanski, Milos Forman and Wim Wenders. He featured heavily in Gregory Monro’s 2020 documentary Kubrick By Kubrick which blends archival footage with interviews the filmmaker granted to Ciment.
Ciment was also a longtime friend of Screen International and loyal contributor to the annual Cannes jury grid.
As global film industry mourned his death on Monday, Gilles Jacob, former president of Cannes Film Festival, expressed his “respect” on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday night, writing that Ciment was “not only a great critic and internationally renowned historian, but also a curious spirit about cinema and art who had fought for it all his life. His close ties to the great filmmakers kept Positif magazine going strong”.
Addressing Ciment’s wife, son and family, Jacob added: “I want to say how much Michel, through his intelligence, his knowledge and his transmission, has brought to the younger generations of film lovers.”
Le Masque et la Plume producer Jerome Garcin called Ciment “perhaps the freest, most encyclopaedic mind film criticism has ever produced”. Ciment took part on the programme for the last time at the end of September. Earlier this year he was named guest programmer of the 2023 San Francisco International Film Festival.
Jean-Marc Lalanne, editor-in-chief of French cultural magazine Les Inrocks, told Screen: “The most impressive thing about Michel was the way in which some of the most important filmmakers regarded him as a privileged interlocutor, a partner in their work of thinking about cinema.
“For Stanley Kubrick or Terrence Malick, he was practically the only critic in the world to whom they gave regular interviews. Scorsese, the Coen brothers, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Aki Kaurismaki gave him time like no other journalist. There was something very pragmatic in his approach to films, a respect and intelligence about how they were made, which earned him the respect of many filmmakers in quite unique proportions.”
Speaking to France Inter in 2019 about his book Une Vie de Cinema, Ciment said, “I love the darkness because it’s not that dark. In a movie theatre, we really feel like we’re next to other people. We can really feel their presence in the room.”
He added, “I go to the movies to discover. It’s my passion. To see first films, spot new talents and support them. And the second reason is to understand the world and myself. It’s to enlighten myself.”
The Cannes and Venice film festivals both paid tribute to Ciment in statements.
Venice cited Ciment’s long history with its festival: “From 1964 until two years ago, with his uninterrupted presence and his human and intellectual example, Michel Ciment honoured the Venice International Film Festival to which he was bound by respect and passion.
The Cannes statement said: “His opinions, both enlightened and strong, clear-cut and inflexible, meant a great deal and his voice resounded in the corridors of the Palais des Festivals at the end of each screening, amongst his attentive colleagues. Michel set the tone, in France and abroad. His death should remind us all of the importance of his legacy, and the need for ardent and resistant film review.
“The Festival de Cannes without Michel Ciment will never be quite the same. We will miss him. And so will cinema.
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