‘We’ll always have Paris’

The long war between France and the US has its liveliest consequence in the world of film: Hollywood does movies, the French do cinema. In terms of equipment, the Yanks were the pioneers, but France’s Charles Pathé was the first tycoon and — more importantly — George Méliès was the inventor, by accident, of the method of cutting from scene to scene which has become the signal contribution of cinema to narrative.

After the invention of talkies, Hollywood pulled out of sight and sound of its panting pursuers, but the French have remained obstinately inventive and creatively resentful: they harbour an abiding sense of having been robbed of an art form which has been degraded by Californian philistines. Only a few American directors (and Alfred Hitchcock) were dubbed auteurs by François Truffaut and his chums at Cahiers du Cinéma when, in the 1950s and onwards, they attempted the coup which would make them self-appointed arbiters of cinematic merit (poor Vincente Minnelli fell off their train, because he was such a poor subject for interview).