Biography

Roger Leenhardt (23 July 1903 – 4 December 1985) was a French writer and filmmaker. Born in a bourgeois Protestant family, this brilliant student of philosophy was very soon fascinated by cinema. Through a cousin, he started working for the newsreel program Éclair Journal and in 1934 set up his own production company with René Zuber, "Les Films du Compas," later known as, "Roger Leenhardt Films. ” As a critic in the journal Esprit, he was considered one of the most perceptive observers of pre-war France and strongly influenced André Bazin and the entire "Nouvelle Vague. ” Thanks to his series of articles known as "La petite école du spectateur," cinema became considered as an art and a language in its own right.