Henri Langlois (1914-1977), his name pronounced "ahn-ree lan-whah," was a pioneer in the fields of film preservation and reparatory programming. With director Georges Franju (Eyes without a Face) Langlois founded the Cinematheque Francaise way back in 1936, when he was in his early twenties and the era of silent cinema had only just ended. During the Nazi Occupation Langlois' apolitical love of cinema and desire to screen films from America and Russia put him at odds with the Vichy government, but after the war his ever-growing collection of prints and negatives, combined with an artful and exhaustive programming schedule, influenced a generation of film buffs who would soon burst onto the film scene as the French New Wave.

Langlois himself was an unkempt bohemian and nonconformist, a corpulent man whose enormous frame and baggy, buggy eyes recall American character actor Thomas Gomez. His maverick nature and disrespect for authority eventually came to a head in the late-1960s when Langlois was unceremoniously ousted from his post: a move by the French government that gave birth to a tsunami of protests, not just within the French film community but throughout the world of cinema.

Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque will delight those with a strong interest in film, French cinema especially, but not anyone else. The film fights an uphill battle in trying not only to recount and explain Langlois' passion but also to transfer some of this excitement to the viewer. It would seem an aim of the film, much like Langlois himself, to make the viewer want to immediately rush out and watch a lot of movies, but this aim only partly succeeds.

One appreciates many of Langlois' observations about issues of spectatorship, how for instance his programming strategy of showing films only once then withholding them for perhaps a decade or more generated a sense of urgency and excitement lost in this age of instantly accessible DVDs and downloadable movies. He impresses upon his followers the need to save everything, all movies, that it's impossible to predict what will have value 50 years from now and what will be forgotten. ("Anyone who thinks he has taste is an idiot," Langlois asserts.) We learn that rather than dismiss bad movies out of hand, Langlois' philosophy was to find what value there was to be had in a reel of film, no matter how modest or scarce it might be.

Phantom of the Cinematheque is long (128 minutes; an even longer version was apparently prepared for French TV) but entertaining, and features in new interviews or stock footage just about every major name in the history of French cinema (all the way back to Abel Gance), as well as such internationally-renowned filmmakers as Satyajit Ray, Nicholas Ray, and Alfred Hitchcock, who in one sweet little scene is awarded the Legion D'honneur. Hitchcock, in turn presents the award back to Langlois, a nice gesture. Among those appearing in (mostly) new interviews: Claude Berri, Claude Chabrol, Michel Ciment, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Eric Rohmer, Max Tessier, and many others. .

Quite unlike the Lew Wasserman documentary, Langlois himself is extensively seen via archive footage throughout, though we never really seem to get a complete picture of the man. The film is more nostalgic than critical, but the nostalgia is by itself engaging, such as Chabrol's story of going to the Cinematheque where three films were playing at once. He had already seen Lang's M in the main theater, as well as the film playing in the smaller house upstairs, but was delighted to find Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl unspooling before about a dozen people huddled in the building's stairwell. And that pretty much sums up this tribute to the love of cinema.

Video & Audio

Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque is presented in its original full frame format in an okay transfer that's difficult to judge as the mix of film and video clips used throughout are widely variable in terms of quality. The non-removable English subtitles are unobtrusive, and native French speakers will be pleased to learn that the brief moments of English conversation are supplemented with French subtitles. The stereo audio is up to contemporary standards.

Extra Features

Supplements include Langlois Monumental (1991), a film in mediocre shape about the dedication ceremony for a Langlois monument; and the much shorter Le Musee du Cinema Henri Langlois (1997), a brief short about the Langlois Museum of Cinema, whose treasures include the mummified head from Psycho, Maria the Robot from Metropolis, and dresses worn by Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. Finally, a Still Gallery offers images used in the feature.

Parting Thoughts

French film fans will want to rush out and see this. Those with a general interest in film and cinema history will like it. Others will merely find themselves bemused by its obvious passion for the medium and one of its greatest champions.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.