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.
