September 4 movie: Le Fantôme d'Henri Langlois. This was a fascinating documentary about Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinémathèque Française film archive. I didn't know much about Langlois before watching this. He comes across as having seen film preservation as a calling, having been incredibly passionate about that calling, and incredibly good at inspiring people to share his mission. Unfortunately, not so good at the ongoing work of his mission: maintaining the films, handling the details, running a large organization. The movie is kind of defensive about this issue, but mismanagement of the Cinémathèque was clearly a problem.
Still, Langlois' contribution to movies was enormous. According to the movie he invented film preservation, invented the revival house, brought together the people who became the French New Wave movement. Okay, I'm not so crazy about New Wave movies, but for those other two, I'm in Langlois' debt. I think the most thrilling part was the early stuff about Langlois and his partner, Mary Meerson, literally risking their lives to protect movies from the Nazis. According to the documentary, Hitler was intent on destroying all copies of the German language version of The Blue Angel. Langlois saved the movie by cutting a deal with an SS officer who was a Marlene Dietrich fan.
The big bummer of the movie was when they walked through Langlois' museum. An amazing collection of film artifacts, collected and displayed in innovative ways. When they got to the original set from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari I burst out, "We have to go to France so we can see this museum!" Immediately (literally, right after I said that) the movie explains how there was a fire in the building that opponents of the museum used as an excuse to dismantle it "temporarily," twenty years ago. So sad.
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