Le Fantôme d'Henri Langlois (Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque) poster & wallpaper
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Catherine Allégret, Christian Auboire, Claude Chabrol, François Barat, François Truffaut ...( see more  see more... ) , Henri Alekan , Jack Valenti , Jean-Luc Godard , Jean-Michel Arnold

Henri Langlois, co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 1936, the world's first film archive, was an enormously curious and classically rumpled film aficionado who fought film's disposabl...( read more  read more... )e status by saving everything. Joined by the equally eccentric Mary Meerson, over the course of 40 years Langlois hid thousands of films from the Nazis and championed the work of once-forgotten stars (Louise Brooks, Gloria Swanson) and American genre directors (Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray). The man who schooled Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, and Chabrol, helped make Paris the center of film culture.

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72% liked it

316 ratings

Critics

91% liked it

11 critics

Unrated, 3 hrs. 30 min.

Directed by: Jacques Richard

Release Date: September 9, 2004

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DVD Release Date: August 15, 2006

Stats: 23 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (23)

  • codyfranklin2
    April 7, 2009
    codyfranklin2
    A good documentary about the greatness of Cinematheque co-founder Henri Langlois. I always knew the influence of the Cinematheque on the French New Wave filmakers, but this film shows how Langlois ran it and what films he re-introduced to the public. This was obviously made for ...( read more)French television and I would like to see a slower paced and more in depth documentary on Langlois and the Cinematheque.The doc. goes into how he saved films from the Nazis, American and European studios from being destroyed. He was the first film preservationist and collected movie memorabilia from the first 50 years of film. It goes into how he got films and would show a film only once every 10 years or so.The film also goes into Langlois struggle with the government and lack of funds. The Cinematheque must have been amazing in it's heyday. Langlois received a Honorary Oscar in 1974 for his preservation efforts and reintroduction of forgotten films.
  • CinemaslaveJoe
    November 19, 2006
    CinemaslaveJoe
    "God help anyone who needs subtitles to follow [Buster] Keaton." -- Henri Langlois

    At last, here's a film that may be the ultimate Cinemaslave movie. This documentary about French film preservationist Henri Langlois overcomes the limits of its static "talking head" format to re...( read more)main captivating viewing as we meet the late Langlois, a passionnate film lover who decided to do something about the fact that many of the great movies in the world were being lost or destroyed due to neglect, disregard, and the ravages of time. It is because of Langlois's pioneering -- and surprisingly dangerous -- work that we today have such films as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "Nosferatu" at our disposal... works that were considered worthless by the studios after the advent of talking movies, but which Langlois tirelessly fought to save for posterity, despite the toll his passion took on both his bank account and his marriage. (Not that I'd know anything about that.)

    Believing that all cinema is valuable as a record of the time period in which it was created, Langlois salvaged films from all over the world, even breaking trade embargos by screening banned Soviet films at a time when his own country was at war with Russia. HIs love and admiration for the cinema was his overriding factor, not politics or nationalism; indeed, he once traded a (terrible) military documentary of no importance to a Third Reich officer in exchange for a rare Marlene Dietrich film that otherwise would have been destroyed.

    There are tragic tales of movies lost along the way, such as Langlois's revelation that he once passed up the chance to buy a 35mm print of Theda Bara's legendary silent epic "Salome." Since the film was originally released by Fox, Langlois passed up the sale, believing Fox had its own print. They didn't, and by the time Langlois realized his mistake, the sole existing print had been destroyed by the seller, who no longer wanted to pay for the storage of a "worthless" silent movie. Today, the movie rivals Lon Chaney's "London After Midnight" as the world's most wanted "lost" film.

    Langlois himself communicates his passion through archival footage, with some of the best moments coming from his "talk through" of an 1895 Lumiere Brothers silent film. He stands in front of the screen as the film is projected, and through a curious trick of the light he appears to become intermixed with the silent footage, pointing out the way that this short movie clip captures history far better than the more "professional" news broadcasts of today. And one gets the impression, watching Langlois merging into the image of the movie behind him, that that's where he truly belongs.

    "Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque " is a mesmerizing portrait of a life transformed by the movies, and one's man quest to give back to the medium as much as got out of it. Don't miss it.

View All Le Fantôme d'Henri Langlois (Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque) Reviews

Critic Reviews

October 12, 2005
A.O. Scott, The New York Times

Jacques Richard's affectionate documentary makes a persuasive case for Henri Langlois as one of the most important figures in the history of film.

View more Le Fantôme d'Henri Langlois (Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque) reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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