The great French film critic Michel Ciment has passed, he was 85. He wrote for Positif magazine, which was created as a counter rival to Cahiers du Cinema. He was also a regular on French radio since 1970 with his world-renowned radio show Le Masque et la Plume show.
I saw Ciment at Cannes in May and, although he was walking with a cane, looked fairly healthy to me — walking around from screening to screening. I’m pretty sure he also attended Venice in September. So, his passing does seem very sudden.
Ciment joined Positif after sending the editorial team a text on Orson Welles’ “The Trial” in 1963, and later became its editor. This began the rivalry between Positif and Cahiers, Ciment would later describe, quite simply, the difference between the two publications by saying “Cahiers du Cinema supported some directors. Positif supported other directors”.
His immense book on Stanley Kubrick (“Kubrick”) is known, in many circles, as the definitive read on the legendary filmmaker. In fact, Ciment was one of the very few journalists who was close with Kubrick. Roger Ebert once said that Ciment was "a member of Kubrick's small circle of confidants"
He’s authored numerous other books on cinema, about well-known directors, such as Fritz Lang, Jane Campion and Elia Kazan. Le Masque et la Plume producer Jerome Garcin called Ciment “perhaps the freest, most encyclopaedic mind film criticism has ever produced”.
Jean-Marc Lalanne, editor-in-chief of Les Inrocks, told Screen that perhaps the most impressive thing about Ciment was the access he received from notedly reclusive filmmakers:
For Stanley Kubrick or Terrence Malick, he was practically the only critic in the world to whom they gave regular interviews. Scorsese, the Coen brothers, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Aki Kaurismaki gave him time like no other journalist. There was something very pragmatic in his approach to films, a respect and intelligence about how they were made, which earned him the respect of many filmmakers in quite unique proportions.
In a 2010 documentary about Ciment, Quentin Tarantino stated that cinema was in good hands when someone like Ciment existed.