Roger Leenhardt (23 July 1903 – 4 December 1985) was a French writer and filmmaker.

Early life

Born in a bourgeois Protestant family, this brilliant student of philosophy was very soon fascinated by cinema. Through a cousin, he started working for the newsreel program ''Éclair Journal'' and in 1934 set up his own

production company A production company, production house or production studio is a studio that creates works in the fields of performing arts, new media art, film, television show, television, radio, comics, interactive arts, video games, websites, music, and video ...

with René Zuber, "Les Films du Compas," later known as, "Roger Leenhardt Films.”

Career

As a critic in the journal '' Esprit'', he was considered one of the most perceptive observers of pre-war France and strongly influenced

André Bazin André Bazin (; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist. He started to write about movies in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine '' Cahiers du cinéma'' in 1951 ...

and the entire "Nouvelle Vague.” Thanks to his series of articles known as "La petite école du spectateur," cinema became considered as an art and a language in its own right. Leenhardt also contributed to other journals, such as ''Fontaine, Les Lettres Françaises'', and ''l'Ecran français'', in which in 1948 he delivered his famous cry, "Down with Ford! Long Live Wyler!" In 1949, he fostered the creation of the cinema club Objectif 49 of which he was the co-president with

Robert Bresson Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson made a notable contribution to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, Ellipsis (narrative device), ellipses, an ...

and

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. Destined to promote a new cinema d'auteur, the club resulted in the creation in Biarritz of the Festival of Cursed Films 'Festival des Films Maudits'' Beginning in the 1950s he presided over the French Association for the Promotion of Cinema 'Association française pour la diffusion du cinéma''which organized a traveling festival, Cinéma Days 'Les Journées du cinéma''(1953–1960). Finally, in 1955 Leenhardt participated in the creation in Tours of the International Days of Film 'Journées internationales du film''which became the Festival of Tours. Specialized in short films, the festival brought together the foremost filmmakers, including

François Truffaut François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. He came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin as a ...

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, Agnès Varda,

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, Robert Enrico, and others. His documentary works are numerous and include the creation of more than 60 short films and the production of a similar number. There are two main categories of his work: Portraits of great writers (e.g.

François Mauriac François Charles Mauriac (; ; 11 October 1885 – 1 September 1970) was a French novelist, dramatist, critic, poet, and journalist, a member of the'' Académie française'' (from 1933), and laureate of the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Pr ...

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, etc.), and portraits of famous painters (e.g., Monet, Pissarro, Bazile, etc.). He also made a film on the origins of photography (''Daguerre ou la Naissance de la photographie'', 1964) and another on the invention of cinema (''Naissance du cinéma'', 1946), a masterpiece of pedagogical and intelligence. Privileging his artist vision, Leenhardt made only three feature-length fiction films: ' (1948), ' (1961), and, for television, ''Une fille dans la montagne'' (1964). Moreover, Roger Leenhardt appeared in three films as an actor. In ''Les Dernières vacances'', he is the teacher.

Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as ...

chose him to be the character "Intelligence" in '' Une femme mariée'' (1964) and

chose him as the publisher in '' L'Homme qui aimait les femmes'' (1977). He died from a heart attack in Paris on 4 December 1985.

References

*Roger Leenhardt, ''Les yeux ouverts: entretiens avec Jean Lacouture''. Seuil, 1979. *Roger Leenhardt, ''Chroniques du cinéma''. Cahiers du cinéma, 1986. {{DEFAULTSORT:Leenhardt, Roger 1903 births 1985 deaths French film producers