Cahiers du cinéma, the French film journal founded in 1951, had a cataclysmic influence on film-making and writing. The story of its genesis and subsequent life-cycle resonates with critics, practitioners and the film-going public, but a substantial history of the journal, a succinct account from start to finish, has not existed in any language up until now.

Cahiers can claim to having established film as the ‘seventh art’, equal to literature, painting or music, while previously it had been regarded merely as mass entertainment, or a vehicle for literary adaptations. The critics first involved with the journal—Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol—used the pen as their weapon in a battle that should be understood as the last great modernist project.

The history of Cahiers brings into focus new questions concerning the relation between film and criticism, not only outlining Bickerton’s response but also including short portraits on contemporary filmmakers to match. A Short History of Cahiers du Cinéma will be a testimony to this critical outlook, and a rallying call for such an approach today.