Film critic Michel Ciment died at the age of 85, his entourage confirmed to France Inter on Monday evening, November 13.
“Michel Ciment was a reference in film criticism. France Inter listeners have heard his voice for more than 50 years in Le Masque et la Plume,” Adèle Van Reeth, the director of public radio, wrote on X (ex-Twitter).
He was also producer of the show “Projection Privée” on France Culture from 1990 to 2016. “He dedicated his entire life to transmitting, through speech and writing, his erudition and his passion for the seventh art,” said paid tribute to France Culture on X.
“Film criticism is shrinking like nothing else”
Director of publication of the magazine Positif, which he joined in the 1960s, Michel Ciment was also a lecturer at the University of Paris VII, and author of books on cinema, notably on Stanley Kubrick, Elia Kazan, Joseph Losey , Francesco Rosi or Jane Campion.
“He is perhaps the freest, most encyclopedic spirit that film criticism has ever produced,” said Jérôme Garcin, producer of the show “Le Masque et la Plume.”
In the 1960s, “when you were critical, you weren’t afraid of making enemies. Today, film criticism is shrinking like nothing,” lamented Michel Ciment in an interview with Le Monde in 2019. “Young people are more cautious. Perhaps they are secretly envious of a time when you could scrap metal. I had the advantage of being a teacher, with a monthly salary. It gave me total economic independence,” he explained.