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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
History and Historiography of Cinema
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2001-10-01
2022-12-01
2001-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Gian Piero Brunetta
2001/10/01
Università di Padova
2036-461X
1
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History and Historiography of Cinema
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19199/17011
1
HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF CINEMA
Gian Piero Brunetta, Università di Padova




   It was necessary that the history of cinema, being a young discipline in full develop-
ment and in quest of its own identity, be bathed in positivism so that a full and credible
inventory could be taken of the works produced and of the efforts behind them.
   In Italy that was done in an exemplary manner by Aldo Bernardini and Vittorio
Martinelli in a titanic filmographic work supported by the added value of a passion
which has remained unabated for decades.
   However, we feel that now the time has come when a new challenge should be met
thanks also to an improved film vision, since we have now been for some years active on the
foundation of international communities of scholars working on a common level, the
structuring of philology and common rules of filmographic classification are all to be estab-
lished. At this point, I would like to borrow some considerations made by Fernand Braudel,
to whom I have referred several times in the course of my work Storia del cinema italiano.1

  At the risk of being considered an impenitent supporter of a laissez faire policy I maintain
  that all ways are good to cross history’s several thresholds. Unfortunately none of us knows
  them all, but the historian will start by opening the door he knows best and when he will try
  to see beyond, he will necessarily have to knock on another door and another one… Each
  time a new or slightly different scene will come to sight and no historian worth of his name
  will be unable to juxtapose a certain number of them. For me, history is conceivable only as
  an infinite number of dimensions with one concrete and multidimensional base beyond
  which everyone of us remains free.2

  Therefore, a thousand and more objects for a thousand and more stories. This concept
must be stressed strongly. Today the workshop of cinema’s history is destined to a great
development if it is fostered by the various disciplinary experiences.
  This is no longer the time for hegemonic statements on one simple concept of histo-
ry, or one line or one model bound to live only one summer or a few seasons.
  Nowadays there is no compass pointing us towards a certain and definite point with-
in this territory, nor is there a discipline or a set rule capable to assert itself and legiti-
mately submit all the others.3
  However the ethics of research do exist and to them I personally give a very important
role: the ethics passing through respect and appreciation for the work done, even if of
different quality, which promote knowledge and are not satisfied with the mere
acknowledgement of single data. Slowly, but through a process of constant develop-
ment, what we could call the international scientific community is in search of proce-
dures and methods both recognisable and acceptable.

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                                                           HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF CINEMA

  A method asserts itself when it is accepted and agreed upon by a group, an institution
or a scholarly community. Its strength consists not in its power to impose rules and reg-
ulations but in making its proceedings clear and understandable as well as in its mould-
ing power and adequacy in relation to the variety of objects.
  Neither the history of cinema nor criticism or philology are born today. We are wit-
nesses and protagonists of a new important phase of cinema’s historiography.
Although aware of living in privileged conditions, I am personally convinced that our
prime task is to proceed without severing the ties or wasting our knowledge, albeit
uncertain, elementary, or approximate which have proceeded us.


The Lesson of the Fathers

  In July 1942, after three years of silence, Georges Sadoul wrote a letter to his friend
and historian of cinema Jay Leyda to inform his that he was still alive and in spite of the
war, he had managed to save a part of his work using it to write the gigantic Histoire
générale du cinéma,4 which he had begun on August 15th, 1939 and completed on May
9th, 1940 by copying the text and ending the third part.

  On May 10th, as you know, our war had indeed begun. It took me to Alsace on the Somme.
  Then there was the great shock of June 5th. On June 10th we were the last soldiers on the Oise
  line, defending Paris and on June 13th I was one of the last soldiers looking back at the Eiffel
  Tower on top of which for a few more hours, the tricolour would still be waving.
  Painful memories mixing with those of the massacres on the Loire where I was on June 15th
  1940.
  I found myself demobbed wearing an old blue serge suit, penniless, owning two shirts and a
  toothbrush, without friends or addresses (I had lost my address book where also your
  address was written. But what was the use of it in a moment when France was torn in so
  many parts?)
  My only earthly possession was the manuscript of my history of the cinema stuffed in my
  backpack on which I had slept during the past two months.
  I was free in what was called the “free-zone” and was lucky enough to find a small job in the
  civil service here in Toulouse.5

  I found it necessary to quote Sadoul’s letter for several reasons: because even today his
history of the cinema is considered an admirable and masterly monument not only for
the conditions under which it was done, but also because it is the first innovative work
sharing the spirit of the founding fathers of the Annales, and in the meantime trying to
keep on the same level as the historiographic works of the great historians of that time.
  It was not a case that in those war years Marc Bloch wrote a rough copy of his
Apologie pour l’histoire6 and Fernand Braudel, in a concentration camp, held a series of
memorable lessons which were collected and published almost fifty years later under
the title of Les Ambitions de l’histoire.
  Sadoul is the first pontifex of cinema’s historiography and the first who tried to look
at it from a global point of view; the first critic who transformed himself into a scholar
and was able to throw a bridge between cinema as an industrial product as well as an
artistic event and the history of contemporary world.

                                                                                                 ­99
GIAN PIERO BRUNETTA

  Sadoul was the first one to be “field promoted” in spite of all the difficulties of that
time, a “proto-historian” of international cinema for merits, vastity of knowledge, abun-
dance and novelty of instruments used.
  It was in fact the impending catastrophe that urged him to try and save from oblivion
an art born only a few decades before.
  The manuscript adventurously saved which in turn saved part of his historical mem-
ory of cinema, was the source of all successive historiographic studies including those
carried out by the new generations of historians whose work was legitimated by the
university world and enjoyed an easy access to the sources as well as a privileged posi-
tion.
  I would like once again to mention Sadoul’s works in the occasion of his presentation
of the results reached internationally by the historiography of cinema during the
Venice Film Festival of 1964:

  Working with basic means, he says, we are the Méliès of the history of cinema. We were the
  first to begin with much courage and often with foolhardiness to carry out a work (above all
  my own work) which I consider temporary and approximate.
  As far as my books are concerned I hope they will be emended of all printing errors, date and
  translation mistakes, but mostly I hope that my books will be the starting point to demolish
  all that has been done so far and build something new.
  As far as the majority of our works are concerned, demolishing and re-building will be the
  task of future generations.7

   Davide Turconi, when introducing that conference proceedings, and more than twen-
ty years after in an essay on international studies of the history of cinema affirmed:
“The history of cinema has yet to be written.”8
   Certainly the path to the foundation of a respectable historiography and its search of
scientific legitimisation is all uphill: from the Histoire du cinématographe dès origines
à nous jours by Michel G. Coissac9 to its contemporary Naissance du cinéma by Léon
Moussinac10, to the more or less popular “histoires” of the 30s and 40s often admirable
for the writer’s effort such as Panorama du cinéma by Georges Charensol,11 or Ettore
Margadonna,12 Bardèche and Brasillach;13 from Francesco Pasinetti, who wrote his his-
tory when he was twentyfive re-elaborating and up-dating his degree thesis presented
five years before at Padua,14 to Carl Vincent15 and his contemporaries Angel Zuñiga,16
Carlos Fernandez Cuenca17 with his Una historia del cine and Marcel Lapierre,18 all
wrote their histories using second hand material written by critics, often clever, on very
weak memories and impressions, without solid bases.
   In all these cases the writer’s ambitions were rather modest and so were also their pos-
sibilities of carrying out a proper field research.
   In any case these “proto-historians” of the cinema seem to consider the new form of
artistic expression as being conditioned and determined by the social, political, artistic
and cultural terrain on which it is developing.
   For a certain period of time, as maintained by Marcel Oms in a still actual and very
illuminating essay, a certain type of literature drawing its lymph from theorisation and
poetic language engulfed cinema and took its place.19 And for a long time in spite of all
efforts, Sadoul being an exception and an example, many capable critics could not turn
themselves into historians.

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                                                     HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF CINEMA

  Nowadays the situations is completely different and the wind blows in the sails of
both a widespread historiographic awareness and the need, perhaps favoured by the
recently celebrated 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema, to draw the first balance
and to re-design a number of histories using fresh sources of information as well as new
instruments and new knowledge of the relationship between different histories.
  The necessity of popularising this type of literature has given birth to a number of
summaries and compilations cut out to suit the new author’s experience, but regards of
the undoubtedly passionate fervour of the research in the historiographic field, few
results stemming from the sharing of methods and sources have been achieved.20
Therefore I feel it my duty to draw again the reader’s attention to the work of Georges
Sadoul and Jean Mitry.
  Sadoul is no doubt the authoritative father of modern cinema historiography. From
his words and his writings a conception of work as a tiring and enthusiastic adventure
drawing near to a possible truth emerges neat and clear: a constant process of re-defini-
tion and re-discussion of not quite definite boundaries in constant expansion.
  Sadoul is admiringly aware, like all great masters, of the uncertainty and perfectibili-
ty of the results achieved, of hypothesis continuously changing and of the capacity to
point out the path to be followed through his method and example. His work is all the
more admirable as it is carried out without the help of any reference points, consoli-
dated methods or definitive results.
  Independently from how firmly his statements and interpretations may hold time, or
from the authority of the sources utilised, what is stirring even today is his capacity to
question the data collected and his open-mindedness towards the opinions of the inter-
national critics, as well as his constant preoccupation to always give a point of view and
an interpretation without confining himself to the mere listing of information.
  Although Sadoul is moving in a scenery never before imagined by other internation-
al scholars, he has no aspirations to complete and total information, and his work never
appears to be inspired by Positivism.
  Sadoul’s vision of the Marxist world, from an historical point of view, is very prag-
matically adopted to each situation and is never limited by a conceptual grid mechani-
cally and totally constraining and reducing the interpretation of his thought.
  Although the film sources in his possession were very modest, even today Sadoul’s
work is appreciated for the results achieved by the use of his memories and of all the
opportunities given to him by his work as a critic, but above all by his capacity to
always look at films and at cinema as a phenomenon both as a militant critic and as a
scholar.
  In many cases the development reached in this field are measured using Sadoul’s
work as the starting point.
  The spirit of the militant critic, the ideal fighter of the past WWII and Cold War years
co-existed with that of the historian perfectly aware of his pioneer’s role and apostolic
figure.
  As a critic, Sadoul was always ready to unsheathe his Durendal and fight for any good
cause both in his daily work for Libération and as host, inflamed with passion, at ciné-
club soirées. He was constantly in search of the Holy Grail in the immense territories
opened by post war cinema in film festivals throughout the world, in the Parisian
movie theatres and in that magic den accessible only to few people which was Henry
Langlois’ Cinémathèque. Any opportunity was good for him to charge into battle

                                                                                      ­101
GIAN PIERO BRUNETTA

against the enemies of some films, fighting with all the weapons at his disposal, some-
times stylistical other times esthetic, economic, ethical or even ideological.
  As an historian, possessed in equal measure by a huge hunger which made him digest
and elaborate any amount of paper work and movie sources, Sadoul appeared more bal-
anced ready to open himself to different views and prepared to accept ideas foreign to
his thought although never renouncing to his ideological orientation.
  Sadoul, like many post war critics, called to a daily battle of ideas, made also some
colossal blunders (one of the best known was his glorification of Stalinist cinema) and
indeed was many times blinded by his political passion but never in his historian’s
capacity.
  Sadoul’s work primarily when dealing with silent movies, was carried out in total
absence of film material and therefore only through consultation of newspaper
sources, books and notes from the literature of the first decades.
  But Sadoul’s talent appeared in all its brilliance when it came to getting the best out
of written or oral sources to place figures and works in the overall picture. He knew
how to re-compose the landscape of a certain cinematographic trend, although in a way
which nowadays may appear imprecise and full of gaps, facing the problem of relations
between figures, of different measures and scale of importance both at expressive, ide-
ological or economical level.
  Jean Mitry, who drew a massive help out of his surprisingly active and reliable mem-
ory, tried instead a transversal approach to the phenomenon placing inside the same
perspective the history of economics, of technical development and the comparative
history of language and expression development.
  Mitry placed the framework of his experience and knowledge of cinema at the end of
a route along which, almost without interruption, the creative activity had grafted
itself over the author’s, collector’s and film archivist’s flair.
  The research carried out and the direct consultation of texts, the capacity to critically
dissect the films had been the base of Mitry’s monumental film work as well as the the-
oretical studies to be found in the Esthétique et psychologie du cinéma.21
  Alike Sadoul, Mitry considered it necessary that a new history of cinema should con-
sist of a history of Technique, a history of Industry, a history of Form and finally a his-
tory of Art and that they all should be bound together by a web of cultural, economic
and psycho-cultural threads.
  Mitry, more than Sadoul, seemed to point at a more total idea of history, more dynam-
ic and more pliable, where micro and macro history moved forward at the same pace
and together with the history of authors and structures there was also space for a his-
tory of evolution of the form, grammar, syntax and also for the exploration of symbols,
dreams and changes in the psychology and the mentality of the spectator.22
  Mitry’s workshop was equipped with apt and heterogeneous instruments but Sadoul
probably had in his DNA a greater number of historian’s genes.
  The merit of these two historians has been the legitimisation of historical research
through their work trying to establish its identity and peculiarity without loosing the
link with the XX Century history and also the conception of history of cinema without
scientific ambitions, but as a limitless territory full of tensions and completely open to
all influences. Beside Sadoul and Mitry, others must not be forgotten for various rea-
sons: the contemporaries Jay Leyda – not only for his fundamental contribution to the
foundation of the history of Soviet cinema but also for his teachings at New York

­102
                                                     HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF CINEMA

University when he started the first true generation of historians of cinema in the US –
and for different reasons also Henry Langlois and Maria Adriana Prolo.
   All together they have drawn a constellation of fathers of contemporary internation-
al cinematographic historiography, notwithstanding the differences in method and in
contribution in terms of material work.23
   Their work, example and action have saved cinema’s heritage, building the path over
which history of cinema has subsequently advanced.
   In a way their work and history represents an epochal period of historiography and
film archiving and is a demonstration of how a relevant part of history of cinema could
be passed on thanks to the merits of a single scholar, depository of collective memory.
   The Parades Gone By by Kevin Brownlow was published in 1968, which was followed
in the following decades by a number of works opening the path to a type of historiog-
raphy acting on several planes and mixing an extraordinary skill in library research
with the capability of returning the texts to their proper context thus making them re-
live in courageous and avant-garde philological operations through different media
events.24
   From a certain moment onwards it became evident that, although genial, the work of
a single researcher was destined to be inadequate regarding its object and that it was
becoming more and more necessary to create a “common ground” to revise and re-visit
the history of cinema as well as for a new circulation of methods and ideas.
   Perhaps it was not by chance that the most significant result and the most innovative
openings in historical work in the last decades come from groups of scholars of differ-
ent formation although mostly bound together by the work in a film archive.
   I am thinking above all of the pioneer work of the Cahiers de la Cinémathèque of
Perpignan, linked to the Cinémathèque of Toulouse and founded by a group of scholars
such as Marcel Oms, José Baldizzone, Pierre Guibbert, Barthélemy Amengual, Jean Gili,
François de la Bretèque besides Mitry himself, who all had strong historian’s formation.
   Since the beginning of the 70s, this journal has privileged from all possible approach-
es to cinema, the historical line without ever showing an inferiority complex in con-
fronting the historians, the type of problems, the systematic of its projects, the recogni-
tion of the history of cinema and its being capable to represent all historical elements
of the past. It has therefore contributed to the consolidation and legitimisation of his-
torical research on cinema, focusing on the plurality of directions and the representa-
tion of certain social classes or periods of world history to the study of the thought and
the analysis of the single works.
   Other journals have in time become workshops and meeting points for cinema histo-
rians like the Spanish Archivos, linked to the Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana, or
the Italian Griffithiana (founded in the 1970s by Angelo H. Homouda for the Cineteca
Griffith and now linked the Cineteca del Friuli and Le Giornate del Cinema Muto),and
Cinegrafie a workshop journal of the Cineteca di Bologna, Film History directed by
Richard Koszarski then director of the American Museum of Moving Image in New
York, and the latest born Cinémathèque, a magazine of the Cinémathèque Française the
most open to dialogue with scholars of different discipline origin.
   If the journal published by the Institute Jean Vigo is the one which has tried more
than any to become a common ground for the encounter between historians and film
historians, the other publications have become a meeting point for a kind of research
more properly historical and archival, based on text analysis and theoretical observa-

                                                                                       ­103
GIAN PIERO BRUNETTA

tion. There is also been a progressive opening to the dialogue between different disci-
plines and the movement towards the historical ground of entire groups of semiolo-
gists who are going through a critical period after the splendour of the 70s and the
beginning of the 80s.
  All these magazines have known schools and privileged observation points where to
become acquainted with the emerging scholars in the international panorama, com-
paring the first results of research in progress with the whole range of film archiving
works such as restoration projects or research promoted in occasion of festivals or film
shows.
  From the early 70s and in scattered order, historians such as Marc Ferro and Pierre
Sorlin have approached the movie world.
  For the new generation of historians the memory of cinema is no longer born and
kept in the individual life but can be brought back recomposed and circulated as a com-
mon heritage by the new policy by which libraries and archives are run, by the restora-
tion programs contributing to give new light and best viewing conditions to old texts
thus favouring their setting in a more pertinent background.
  Together with the aforesaid, other factors must not be forgotten, such as collectors,
video cassettes, CD rom and television programs, as well as that new instrument called
Internet, whose potentiality can at the moment only be guessed.
  If we expect that these works keep their meaning, each generation must question
them and read them again after today’s restoration techniques have brought them back
to the best possible conditions, so that scholars may feel urged to become themselves
part of the picture leaving in it their personal work.
  From this point of view one has a strong feeling that a new era is beginning for histo-
riography of the present and future cinema.


Common Ground and Horizon

  If we think about the possibilities open in front of the present and future historians,
we can envisage some perspectives and reference points which may create the future
basis of wide range common projects.
  1) Let us begin from the audience, a shadowy entity never taken into consideration in
the past when critics concentrated their attention on works and authors. Cinema has
been, amongst other things, some kind of privileged lay ritual in which the XX
Century’s man has accumulated the light of the screen and the images transforming
them into social and ideological emotion.
  I think that only recently work has been done, with original results, on the role played
by the audience, on the ritual of vision and on the changes in collective behaviour.25
Even beginning with the earliest projections, the audience was inscribed in the message,
making felt its massive presence at every social level, as had never before happened for
other art form.
  There are stories of individuals, local communities, groups and international audi-
ences all reacting in the same way.
  2) Thanks to cinema, the dream of an international language seems to have come
true, partly in previous centuries by the use of the magic lantern and the diffusion on
international scale of the image market.26

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                                                       HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF CINEMA

  Both the cinema industry and the authors think from this inception in terms of a
super-national market with plots and stories having common roots. Very soon, cinema
starts drawing its lymph from myth, decanting it and making it re-live under the most
varied forms, while the screen light takes the place of the bard’s zither.27
  3) Cinema has been from its very beginning, the singer of modernity but also a nos-
talgic dream of a lost paradise of courtly life and primitive worlds.28
  What is still to be examined is the relationship both in terms of opposition and concur-
rence at national and international level, between the views on modernisation coming
from countries with a different economic development and what in those nations is being
produced for the big screen, i.e. from scientific progress to changes in human and town life.
  The screen is the privileged place for the encounter and the clash of ideologies, ways
of life, mentality, culture, economic models and society and the historian working on
such a huge territory receives a quantity of information for greater than any other
source or documentation.
  4) The history of cinema must be studied by dividing the whole picture in its differ-
ent phases, periods and times. The different pace of development between the various
parts which the system is composed of suggest that the cycles and the timing adopted
so far be revised as the pace of technological progress has never coincided with the
development of language and expression. Furthermore, apart from striking exceptions,
theory and poetry have never developed at the same pace.
  In fact it could be noticed that the development of language reached its height in the
20s with the work of avant-garde groups, while all that happened afterwards was only
a return to order and to structures and models already known.
  There is always a time lag between the work of the critic and the author’s or audi-
ence’s.
  The audience’s biorhythm, the curve of collective emotion and the change in pace of
social life induced by the ritual of film vision have never been made an object of a sep-
arate study.
  The breakdown in periods so far adopted arose within the frame of what could be con-
sidered a simplifying process, – even if the broad division in two areas such as the silent
and the talking movies defines the two main periods common to all schools of thought –
but should be re-considered case by case, country by country and problem by problem.
  5) Film is a point of aggregation and irradiation on an international scale of super-
natural symbols and myths as well as an artificial national identity which are not trans-
mittable by any other cultural or educational medium.
  This concept is valid for Hollywood which has always managed to send across for a
long period a strong message of “all American” models, figures and moral values which
embody the American Dream. But it is also valid for the golden age of Italian silent
movies when all around the world the splendour of our ancient glory was shown on the
screen and the basic message sent across by the films aimed at re-discovering and re-kin-
dling of our national identity.
  6) The screen is the most apt tool for whoever wishes to reassemble the geography
and the history of a nation and Italian cinema offers many more opportunities than any
other cinema.
  But the location of Western movies or other films set in far apart American states
implies a different relationship between the representation of space and that of men-
tality, or between the way of life and individual or collective behaviour.29

                                                                                         ­105
GIAN PIERO BRUNETTA

  In Italian cinema, owing to the polycentric production system, because of the differ-
ent cultural and economic centres and for its tradition of film on location, real life is in
fact the privileged set of a great number of stories and the landscape is an actor and an
instrument of primary importance. But the same can be said for other film industries
such as those of North Europe, Japan and many others like the African, Asian and South
American.
  7) Cinema has been and still is a great diary, a hyperbolic chanson de geste, a fixing
and sedimentation point of history and the collective autobiography of XX Century
man, although in the Internet era, the forms of communication of the new media have
changed the rules of the game.
  Paraphrasing the title of Paul Lejeune’s book Moi est un autre,30 we could say that cin-
ema man has left scattered around in an almost invisible way but fortunately re-com-
posable, a large quantity of fragments belonging to an autobiography, both real and
imaginary, titled “Moi est l’écran – I am the screen.”
  There have been moments when for spectators scattered around the five continents
the real life they shared in common was the one created by a little square of white cloth
on which a light would disclose the access to universe.
  8) Cinema is psychoanalysis’ elder brother. The roads and symbols of dreams, as
taught by the great French historians in the Annales are important and have the mate-
rial solidity of footprints.
  Where and how the dust of our collective dreams deposits itself? How can it be meas-
ured? How a certain vision of the world, be it real or imaginary, materialises in a social
group or in spectators at a given historical moment? How can a systematic research
method be set up by the spectator? Which are the instruments offering the best guar-
antees? Could it be statistical or quantitative analysis? Or the cross-check research? Or
oral historiography? Maybe the letters to magazines written by spectators which have
been so popular since the 20s?
  9) Cinema is an immense archive, a mine and a storage place of all that can be seen, a
perishable monumental memory of great events and unimportant daily actions of
which only the smallest part has so far been explored.
  Since the Lumière brothers the cinématographe’s eye has had the whole globe as its
horizon and has recorded events with the same amount of curiosity.
  Although one should be wary of the all too enthusiastic attitude of that part of the
critic which could be labelled as “propmanship,” the incapacity to classify material by
the proper level of importance and overvaluing therefore every new find, should be
approached with curiosity and an inquiring frame of mind considering it, until proof of
the contrary, worthy of the maximum interest.
  10) Cinema has been since the 20s a determining factor of transmission and transfor-
mation of the great intellectual currents.
  For many generations both cinema in itself and the direct expression in filming have
become the most apt yardstick to measure and to verify its power, the changes of its ref-
erence points, the irregularities, the regularities and the alteration of intellectual cycles,
the changes of direction, the formation of links and their influence on a national and
international scale, the metamorphosis of professional figures, the rebellious, the split
and incommunicability between generations, the clashes and the field battles of one
against all or team against team and group against group.
  Suffice to think about what the Venice Film Festival31 has represented for many gen-

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erations of critics and what, all in all, even during a period of weakening of cinema’s
vital lymph, the film festivals continue to represent even nowadays for thousands of
neophytes and for all those who wish to receive their professional accolade.

                                                        [Translated from Italian by Flavia Tulli]



This text shows passages from an essay soon to be published in the 5th volume of Storia del
Cinema Mondiale (Einaudi Editore) edited by the author. Many thanks to the editor for the
authorisation.

1 G. P. Brunetta, Storia del cinema italiano (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1979-82; 2nd ed. rev. 1993).
2 “Au risque d’être taxé de libéralisme impénitent, je dirai au contraire que toutes les portes me
  paraissent bonnes pour franchir le seuil multiple de l’histoire. Aucun de nous ne saurait les
  connaître toutes malheureusement. L’historien ouvre d’abord sur le passé celle qu’il connaît
  le mieux. Mais s’il cherche à voir aussi loin que possible, obligatoirement il frappera à une
  autre porte, puis une autre… Chaque fois sera mis en cause un paysage nouveau ou légère-
  ment différent et il n’est pas d’historien digne de ce nom qui n’ait su en juctaposer un certain
  nombre […]. Pour moi, l’histoire ne peut se concevoir qu’à n dimensions […] Au-delà de vette
  multiplicité, évidemment, chacun reste libre,” F. Braudel, “Sur une conception de l’histoire
  sociale,” in Ecrits sur l’histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 1994 [1969]), p. 191.
3 I fully agree with what Aldo G. Gargani writes in “Le procedure costruttive del sapere,” in Rue
  de Varennes (march 1988), pp. 12-17
4 The first volume was issued in 1947, the other five, some of which in two tomes were issued
  throughout a period of thirty years: G. Sadoul, Historie générale du cinéma (Paris: Les
  Editions Denoël, 1947-1975).
5 “Le 10, vous le savez, la vraie guerre commençait pour nous. Elle m’a conduit d’Alsace sur la
  Somme. Nous avons subi le grand choc du 5 juin. Le 10 juin, nous étions les derniers soldats,
  sur l’Oise, à défendre Paris. Le 13 juin au soir j’ai été un des derniers combattants à voir, derrière
  soi, s’éloigner la Tour Eiffel où pour quelques heures encore flottait le drapeau tricolore.
  Affreux souvenirs, qui se mêlent à ceux des massacres de la Loire, où j’étais aussi le 15 juin
  1940. Je me suis retrouvé en juillet démobilisé dans un vieux costume de toile bleue, pas d’ar-
  gent, deux chemises et une brosse à dents, sans amis et sans adresses (j’avais perdu mon carnet
  d’adresse dans la bataille, et la vôtre avec les autres, mais à quoi alors, dans une France disper-
  sée, ce carnet pouvait-il servir?), avec comme seul bien terrestre le manuscrit de mon histoire
  du cinéma, qui remplissait une musette sur laquelle j’avais dormi pendant deux mois. J’étais
  libre, et dans ce que nous appelons la zone libre. J’ai eu la chance de trouver ici, à Toulouse, un
  petit emploi dans une administration, et j’y vis, attendant, attendant longuement, inter-
  minablement,” G. Sadoul, Rencontres: chroniques et entretiens (Paris: Denoël, 1984), p 11-12.
6 M. Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien (Paris: Armand Colin, 1949).
7 “Lavorando con mezzi artigianali noi siamo i Méliès della storia del cinema. Abbiamo com-
  inciato per primi con molto coraggio e spesso con incoscienza a condurre dei lavori (parlo dei
  miei soprattutto) che considero come delle approssimazioni provvisorie. Per i miei libri mi
  auguro certo che si emendino tutti gli errori tipografici, gli errori di date, o di traduzione, ma
  più di tutto che partendo dai miei libri, o dai miei lavori, si demolisca ciò che è stato fatto, per
  costruire al suo posto qualcosa di nuovo. Per i lavori della maggior parte di noi, il compito di
  demolizione e ricostruzione si renderà necessario alle generazioni che ci succederanno un
  giorno.” G. Sadoul, in C. Bassotto (a cura di), La storiografia cinematografica (Venezia:
  Marsilio, 1966), p. 16.


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GIAN PIERO BRUNETTA

8 D. Turconi, Quale storia del cinema? Appunti sulla problematica della storia del cinema in
   Leggere il cinema. Le storie e i generi (Milano: Editrice bibliografica, 1987), pp. 19-56.
9 M.G. Coissac, Histoire du cinématographe de ses origines jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Editions du
   Cinéopse Gauthier-Villars, 1925).
10 L. Moussinac, Naissance du cinéma (Paris: J.Povolozsky, 1924).
11 G. Charensol, Panorama du cinéma (Paris: Kra, 1930).
12 E. Margadonna, Cinema ieri e oggi (Milano: Domus, 1932).
13 M. Bardèche, R. Brasillach, Histoire du Cinéma (Paris: Denoel et Steele, 1935).
14 F. Pasinetti, Storia del cinema dalle origini ad oggi (Roma: Edizioni di Bianco e Nero, 1939).
15 C. Vincent, Histoire de l’art cinématographique (Bruxelles: Editions du Trident, 1939).
16 A. Zuñiga, Una historia del cine (Barcelona: Destino, 1948).
17 C. Fernandez Cuenca, Historia del cine (Madrid: 1949).
18 M. Lapierre, Les Cent visages du cinéma (Paris: Grasset, 1948).
19 M. Oms, “Clio de 5 à 7 où considerations sur l’impureté de Clio”, Les Cahiers de la
   Cinémathèque, n° 35-36 (automne 1982), p. 56.
20 J. Talens, S. Zunzunegui, Historia general del cine (Madrid: Catedra, 1996-1998).
21 J. Mitry, Esthètique et psichologie du cinéma (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1963-1965).
22 In interviews and studies on Mitry’s historical work is stressed the necessity to focus above
   all the historical importance of the language invented anew. A wider and more articulated
   study on historical work and on some of its fundamental problems seems conceived by Mitry
   almost as an answer to Sadoul’s: J. Mitry, “De quelques problèmes d’histoire et d’éstèthique du
   cinema,” Les Cahiers de la Cinémathèque, n° 10-11 (été-automne 1973), p. 112. The first vol-
   ume of Histoire du cinéma by Mitry was published in Paris in 1967.
23 I must pay homage to Leyda for being open minded in placing cinema in the history of the
   1900s. Langlois and Prolo made history by saving every kind of material regarding cinema
   and have showed how history of cinema was part of a wider history of vision.
24 From the end of 1960s Brownlow publishes a volume every ten years that will be considered,
   for its originality of contents, a reference for international research. K. Brownlow, The
   Parade’s Gone By (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 1968); Id., The
   War, The West and The Wilderness (London: Secker & Warburg, 1979); Id., Behind the Mask
   of Innocence (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990).
25 L. Rabinovitz, For the Love of Pleasure (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994).
26 This is the topic of my studies in Il viaggio dell’icononauta (Venezia: Marsilio, 1997).
27 Many images are recalled from F. Dupont, Homère et Dallas: introduction à une critique
   anthropologique (Paris: Hachette, 1990).
28 L. Charney, V.R. Shwartz (eds.), Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley:
   University of California Press, 1995).
29 See R. Campari, “I miti del cinema americano” and C. Gaberscek, “Geografia del western da
   Broncho Billy a Clint Eastwood,” in Storia del cinema mondiale. Gli Stati Uniti II (Torino:
   Einaudi, 1999), pp. 639-668 and pp. 795-833.
30 P. Lejeune, Je est un autre: l’autobiographie de la littérature aux médias (Paris: Seuil, 1980).
31 See N. Ivaldi, La prima volta a Venezia (Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1982).




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