Lucien Wahl ou l'avenir de la critique cinématographique en France

SSHRC, Insight Development Grant, 2020-2022

At a time when cinema is undergoing major changes in terms of production, broadcasting and reception, its definition is being re-examined. Revisiting its history provides new insights on issues that constitute its present challenges, and how cinema responds to them.

The project "Lucien Wahl ou l’avenir de la critique cinématographique en France'' traces how the acceptance of cinema as a legitimate art form arose through discourse, in particular the development of film criticism (Gauthier 2008).

By focusing on the textual production of Wahl, a leading critic of the inter-war period, this project will evaluate the breadth of his work between 1926 and 1934, in two different French publications, a cinema magazine, Cinémagazine, and a daily journal, L’Information.

Therefore, the current project will focus on:

(1) finding texts on the cinema written by Lucien Wahl;
(2) compiling an accurate and reliable bibliography of these texts;
(3) analyzing these texts in order to identify thematic and formal characteristics;
(4) demonstrating the importance of Lucien Wahl in the construction of the critical discourse on cinema in France during the inter-war period.