Film Study in Paris

You've got Hollywood, why did you come to Paris to study film? This question definitely wins prize as most frequently asked by French people who find out I'm an American studying film in Paris. And each time it inevitably recurs, I smile and try to steer conversation off into another direction, perhaps taking it as a cue to ask, Ah do you like American films? Howard Hawks? Because to explain why and how not only Americans, but students from many countries are drawn to Paris to study film, to explain this considering difficulties of finding a projector which functions at a Paris university or renting a 16 mm film in this country, to explain that studying film here means studying French intellectual thought during day and frequenting Cin6matheque by night, all that is beyond my day to day conversational patience. And I find my interrogators are usually much happier reliving Scarface anyway. But on other hand, if any of you, reading this, are really interested in hearing what it's like studying film in Paris, I'll try my best to capsulize. Imagine, if you will, Barthes' first session of his seminar for American students. He strolls in, briefcase in hand, sits down, takes out a cigar, surveys room, and when he begins, it is with acknowledgement that there are cetain periods in certain countries when thought, for some reason, moves faster and farther than in other times or in other places and the last twenty years mark such an accelerated period of intellectual work in We'll come back to Barthes and ironic mixture of modesty and self-awareness which allows him to present and analyze his own work as if he were his own most apt student/critic, but for moment, let's consider that opening statement which is so obvious that it can only seem striking as a degree zero starting point. For it is in those same twenty years that cinema has become an object of serious study in France. The thought directed towards film has evolved in these years, undergoing same permutations of approach witnessed in other areas (literature, history). The theories abound

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• Film culture

  Ronald Gottesman•Quarterly Review of Film Studies•1977

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