Jean Douchet

Jean Douchet, born in France, in 1929, is a filmmaker, historian, critic and cinema professor. After finishing his studies in Philosophy, he started to work for La Gazette du Cinéma and, from 1957 on, with Cahiers du Cinéma, where he met other critics that would form the French Nouvelle Vague, such as Rohmer, Godard, Chabrol and Truffaut. He made an impression early, due to the poignancy of his critical look, and he wrote some important works on Alfred Hitchcock and the Nouvelle Vague, but also remarkable analyses on the works of filmmakers such as Murnau, Mizoguchi, Vincente Minelli, Kurosawa and Jean-Daniel Pollet. It is thanks to Douchet that Serge Daney joined the Cahiers. He would later become one magazine’s most iconic critics. As a film analysis professor, at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques and its successor La Fémis, his lectures made an impression on some of the young directors who were his students and invited him to participate in their movies, including François Ozon, Émile Deluze and Xavier Beauvois. Douchet has held, for several years, a weekly film-club at the French Cinematheque, with an analysis and a debate with the audience at the end of the session. He also encourages other French film clubs, in other cities, with monthly sessions following the same method. As a filmmaker, though that is not his main occupation, Douchet directed several short films and documentaries for television.