Though not especially well known today, Henri Langlois is a significant figure in the life of Louise Brooks. Arguably, without Langlois, Brooks would not be as well remembered as she is. It was Langlois who helped renew interest in Brooks’ career in the mid-1950s, and it was Langlois — along with others — who set out to save her films, most notably Pandora’s Box. It was also Langlois who famously said “There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks.” Only after that now famous declaration did Brooks began to emerge from the deep shadows of film history.
Who was Henri Langlois? In short, he was many things – a cinéphile, a pioneering film preservationist, a film archivist, and a co-founder of both the Cinémathèque Française and the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). Jean Cocteau called Langlois “the dragon who guards our treasures”, while director Jean Renoir, speaking about France’s cinéastes and ciné-clubs, said of Langlois, “We owe our passion for film to him.” Decades ago – in fact as long ago as the late 1930s and early 1940s when silent films were little regarded and considered somewhat unfashionable, Langlois began collecting and preserving the best and worst of them. Sometimes, during WWII, his activities put his life in jeopardy — as when he hid banned films from the Nazis, and even traded with a Nazi officer for a rare copy of The Blue Angel (1930), starring Marlene Dietrich. Langlois was also an eccentric, larger than life personality sometimes at the center of controversy for his methods and proclamations, Including his now famous declaration regarding Brooks. Notably, Langlois has a distinction few non-filmmakers can claim. In 1974, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his lifetime work. A video clip of his being awarded an Oscar can be viewed on Youtube. It’s worth watching, if only to take note of the presenter’s introduction in which Langlois is described as a “conscience of the cinema,” its “savior,” and as someone “who stood guard when no one else” did.
In the words of director Jean-Luc Godard, Langlois “produced a way of seeing films” that inspired two generations of filmmakers that changed the very art form itself. Langlois served as an influence on the generation of young filmmakers and critics who came to be known as the French New Wave. He screened films for these young cinéphiles, and these screenings became a kind of school where aspiring young directors, critics and historians learned their trade. They did not attend classes, but simply watched all manner of films. Francois Truffaut was one of these students, as was Godard and others, some of whom came to be known as “les enfants de la cinémathèque”, or the “children of the cinémathèque”. Langlois fascination with Brooks, and his influence on the French New Wave, are evident in two of Godard’s greatest films; the famed French director paid tribute to Brooks through actress Anna Karina, whose impulsive look-alike character in Une Femme est une Femme (1961) and Vivre sa Vie (1961) are said to be modeled on Brooks.
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I have always wanted to find a picture and / or news coverage of “60 Ans de Cinema,” the landmark exhibit organized by Henri Langlois in 1955. As many have recounted, visitors entering the exhibit at the Musée National d’Art Moderne were greeted by two large portraits looming over its entrance. One was of Falconetti in Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Jeanne d’Arc (1927). And the other was of Brooks in G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929). This prominent display of portraits of two little known actresses baffled some. It also led a journalist to ask why an image of an actress like Brooks was featured. And why not instead other celebrated actress like Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich. Langlois’ strident answer, “There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks” was a ringing declaration that became a rallying cry that changed film history. Despite the fame of the exhibit — as well as Langlois’ legendary proclamation, I have never been able to find a picture of the building with its two large iconic portraits.
When ever I get access to vintage French newspapers, I look. I have spent hours plowing through French newspaper databases, which like other newspaper databases, can be hit-or-miss. For me, they have been a miss. Another time, I spent an hour scrolling through microfilm of both Le Monde and Le Figaro, two leading Parisian newspapers, but again I came up empty. Of course, Paris had other newspapers back in 1955, as well as film magazines, so my search will go on…. but still I wonder, does anyone know if a picture even exists? One would think someone would have taken a picture of the building. And, one would think, because of its significance and its novelty, such a photograph would have been reproduced in a book. I’ve looked, and looked….And for that matter, I have yet to come across a photograph of Langlois and Brooks. I’ve come across photos of Langlois and Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and Akira Kurasowa – even Ernest Borgnine, but none with Brooks. They met at least four times.
One of the few articles about the exhibit which I’ve come across was a 1955 piece by Lotte H. Eisner. Her short Film Culture piece did not mention the two portraits hung outside the building, nor did it mention Louise Brooks, which is somewhat surprising, as Eisner, like Langlois, long championed the actress. In her articles, Eisner noted the historical nature of the exhibit — a celebration of the 60 anniversary of cinema, and suggested the show was well received, even popular. The exhibit opened in June, and in her article, Eisner noted “60 Ans de Cinema” was originally set to close at the end of October, but had extended a few more weeks due to popular demand.
Though I haven’t yet found a picture of the exhibit building, I did manage to acquire a copy of the rare exhibit catalog (pictured right). Like the portraits which hung on the building, the catalogue which accompanied “60 Ans de Cinema” put a gilt frame around Louise Brooks. In conjunction with the exhibit, a number of early classic films were shown, including Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Abel Gance’s Napoleon, Chaplin’s The Circus, Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, Pabst’s Joyless Street, and Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last. Also scheduled were Dreyer’s The Passion of Jeanne d’Arc and Pabst’s Le Journal D’Une Fille Perdue, or The Diary of a Lost Girl. (Notably, Pandora’s Box was not screened.)
No author is given for the catalogue entry on The Diary of a Lost Girl, but given its rapturous tone, it was likely Langlois. The Brooks’ film, whose release date is mistakenly given as 1928, was shown on August 6 at 9 pm. The catalogue entry reads: “Greater than Garbo are the face, the eyes, the Joan of Arc style haircut, and the smile of Louise Brooks. Those who have seen her can never forget her. She is the modern actress par excellence because, like the statues of antiquity, she is outside of time. One need only look upon her to believe in beauty, in life, in the reality of human beings; she has the naturalness that only primitives retain before the lens. As soon as she enters a film, its fiction disappears with its art. We have the impression of watching a documentary, as the camera seems to surprise her without her knowing. She is the intelligence of the cinematographic process, she is the most perfect incarnation of photogénie, she embodies in herself all that the cinema rediscovered in its last years of silence: complete naturalness and complete simplicity. Her art is so pure that it becomes invisible. Pabst is a great director, one of those who did the most for the return to classicism which characterizes the end of silent films. But he cannot free himself from hints of expressionism and a certain heaviness, except when he has Louise Brooks as interpreter. As soon as she enters, the artifice disappears. Without it, he would never have been able to become universal, he would never have been able to achieve this direct, naked, objective style, he would never have been able to go so far, to treat such scabrous subjects with this elegance, to analyze everything without appearing to touch it.”
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One might think Brooks had always been Langlois’ favorite star. However, sources differ as to when Langlois first became aware of Brooks. According to Richard Roud’s must-read biography, A Passion for Films: Henri Langlois and the Cinémathèque Française, Langlois likely first saw Brooks in one of her American silents. Roud writes, “One film we know he saw was A Girl in Every Port; years later he was to write that the screening of it in Paris in 1928 was a double discovery — that of the director, Howard Hawks, and that of the star, Louise Brooks: ‘To the Paris of 1928, which was rejecting expressionism, A Girl in Every Port was a film conceived in the present, achieving an identity of its own by repudiating the past. To look at the film is to see yourself, to see the future’.”
However, according to James Card, curator of films at the George Eastman House and another champion of the actress, it was Card himself who introduced Brooks’ films to Langlois. Another excellent biography, Georges Langlois’ Henri Langlois: First Citizen of Cinema, quotes Card, “The article I wrote in Sight & Sound, beginning with quotes from Henri, and his cries of enthusiasm made it seem like he had admired her for a long time. What really happened was that in 1953, during my first stay at the Cinémathèque, I asked to see Loulou and The Diary of a Lost Girl. Henri initially refused. He appeared to have no interest in either film and apparently knew nothing about Louise Brooks.” In attempting to set the record straight, Georges’ biography of his brother states that it was Mary Meerson, Langlois’ partner, who interceded and convinced him to project the two films for Card, if only to see Valeska Gert in Diary of a Lost Girl. Quoting Card, he notes, “So they showed me both films, and Henri watched with me. Fascinated, he fell in love at first sight. Then he started to learn about Louise.”
According to Card’s Sight & Sound article, two years would pass until he resumed his own search for the actress. “But not until I returned from Henri Langlois’ astonishing exhibition in 1955 did it seem imperative to let Louise Brooks know that, after twenty-five years in limbo, Paris had restored her to stardom.” Roud interviewed Brooks, and his biography of Langlois put it this way: “As Miss Brooks told me, ‘It was Langlois who rediscovered me. I was living in New York on First Avenue, and one day a man in a trench coat came to see me. It was Jim Card [curator of the Eastman House film collection in Rochester]. He had just come from Paris, where Langlois had shown him the two films I made with Pabst. When Card told me what Langlois was saying about me, I thought, ‘He must be kidding!’ This was the first time I had heard anything about myself in thirty years.”
Two years after the historic 1955 exhibit, in November of 1957, Brooks went to Europe with James Card. In between screenings and sightseeing in various countries, they stopped off in Paris, and that is when by all accounts Brooks and Langlois first met. The group spent the evening bar-hopping, first at the Ritz Hotel and then at the famed Crazy Horse saloon. A letter Brooks wrote at the time is quoted in the Barry Paris biography. “None of my other old haunts did I see because Henri kept saying, ‘Is finish.’ But he was wonderful to me — no one can make me laugh like him. He has an unlimited assortment of ludicrous faces, mostly of a saintly turn, with which to illustrate his text.” They must have it off…. In early 1958, Brooks sent Langlois a small, oil on cardboard painting she had just completed titled “Thistles Spanish”.
In September of 1958, Brooks got a call from Langlois. He wanted to mount a full-scale hommage, and wanted to know if Brooks would attend. On October 22, Variety reported “Miss Brooks will fly to Paris Oct. 27 to personally participate in the ‘discovery’ of herself 30 years later.” The Langlois organized retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française, “Homage to Louise Brooks,” ran three days and featured five of films; Beggars of Life was shown on November 3, LouLou & Journal d’une Fille Perdue on November 4, and Love em and Leave em & Prix de Beauté on November 5. On the last day of the retrospective, Brooks made a short speech in French, and met with her Prix de Beaute co-star Georges Charlia. She had also attended a reception in her honor (following LouLou ?), and reportedly signed hundreds of autographs. [Notably, the hommage did not screen Brooks’ break-out film, A Social Celebrity, despite the fact the Cinémathèque held what was likely the last remaining copy of the film. The Cinémathèque screened the film on February 6, 1959, and it was destroyed in a vault fire at the Cinémathèque just a few months later, on July 10, 1959.]
With Langlois footing the bill, Brooks stayed in Paris for a month, from October 28 through November 29, 1958. She stayed at the Royal Monceau, where, according to Richard Roud’s biography, she spent most of her time in Paris in bed. “I loved that hotel they put me up at — the Royal Monceau. It was near that wonderful building with those marble pillars and the red damask where the Cinémathéque had its offices [rue de Courcelles]. But I mostly stayed in bed and read. Lotte would come to see me every day. She always kept talking about that German director she admired so much — you know, the one that made Sunrise. As for Henri, well, I didn’t understand a word he said. In those days his English wasn’t very good, and even though I had lived for a while in Paris when I was making Prix de Beauté, my French was no good. So I talked to Lotte, to Mrs. Kawakita, and to some Americans [Elliott Stein and Kenneth Anger]. I got up once for the big reception.”
In fact, Brooks was more social than she let on. According to various accounts, she met with Lotte Eisner on a number of occasions, as well as with Langlois and Mary Meerson (who was at first cautious of her), the artist and photographer Man Ray, and the film journalist Thomas Quinn Curtis, who spoke with her for a column he wrote which appeared in the November 7th International Herald Tribune. Curtis also introduced her to the down and-out director Preston Stuges, and the three of them went out on the town. On November 8, Brooks had lunch in Paris with director Jean Renoir, and viewed his film, Une Partie de campagne (1946). Three weeks later, she viewed what was described as a “mutilated print” of G.W. Pabst’s Threepenny Opera (1931). Sometime during Brooks’ stay in Paris, she also visited the Cinémathèque, and almost met another well known film historian, Jay Leyda.
According to Georges Langlois’ Henri Langlois: First Citizen of Cinema, “One day during Leyda’s beleaguered stay at the Cinémathéque, he was reading at a desk when Langlois burst into the room and, in a determined whisper, commanded: ‘Get under your desk immediately!’ Leyda played along with Langlois’s whim and positioned himself under the desk, whence he could see people only from the waist down. Langlois left the room and returned a minute later, talking to someone in broken English. From his low level vantage point Leyda saw two shapely female legs saunter by. It was a memorable position and an unforgettable moment, since those legs belonged to Louise Brooks. Leyda assumes that Langlois made such a bizarre request so Brooks would not feel the urge to stop and speak to a fellow American. Louise Brooks had come from the United States at Langlois’s invitation in order to attend a special retrospective of films in which she had starred.”
A December 8, 1958 article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle recounted some of the highlights of the trip. “Louise Brooks is back from Paris and from a glowing, fine time as the guest of honor in the nostalgic ‘Homage’ arranged by Henri Langlois, curator of France’s motion picture museum, Cinémathèque Française. The film star of the silents, whose old pictures lately have been very popular in France, returned with a whole chapter of anecdotes that could conceivably become postscripts to a book she is writing in Rochester about films — and women in films. For one thing, she found herself besieged by young fans with autograph books and thinks she must have signed 300 autographs on the day of a reception given in her honor in Paris. She had been announced in a magazine as the ‘Brigitte Bardot of 1920’. ‘After thirty years it makes you feel pretty silly,’ she said. For another, she met Georges Charlia, her leading man in the movie Prix de Beauté, and found him ‘much better looking than he was then and apparently happily married and set for life’.”
“The picture starring Miss Brooks that the French like particularly well is Lulu, which was called Box of Pandora in this country. It has become in the eyes of the public an old classic, and Miss Brooks believes that fans had built up an image of her as an old lady by this time. ‘They expected to see me in a wheelchair, I’m sure,’ she said, ‘and no matter how I actually looked when they saw me , I had to look good in comparison.’ As a matter of fact Miss Brooks, who is small and wears her hair in a pony tail style, has nothing oldish about her at all. Yesterday, she was looking exceedingly chic in a black cloth coat she bought in Paris. ‘I had to have it,’ she said none too regretfully. I arrived in Paris without a coat because I forgot my other one at the airport and didn’t realize it until after the plane took off’.”
“Although she doesn’t speak French, the actress had a tiny speech in French carefully rehearsed for her appearance at L’Homage Louise Brooks and said it, but at another point in the ceremonies missed her cue completely because she didn’t understand French and found herself walking off the stage at a moment when she should have been walking in the other direction to receive a bouquet of flowers. The audience roared.”
Despite such small mishaps, L’Homage Louise Brooks was a triumph, and Brooks was once again the toast of Paris. In the Spring of 1961, Langlois visited Brooks in Rochester, New York. He and Brooks and James Card had dinner together, and later Brooks gave Langlois a box of her homemade walnut fudge. Langlois made sure to call Brooks from New York City before returning to Paris, and later that same year, in 1961, Langlois sent her the catalogue to the Méliès Exposition at the Louvre. Regarding this second rendezvous, Georges Langlois wrote, “When Henri came to see her in Rochester, he was not in the least surprised to discover that Louise Brooks knew much of Proust by heart. ‘For Langlois,’ says Card, ‘Louise Brooks turned out to be not a whit more or less of an extraordinary being than he had expected’.” However, their friendship began to fray and eventually ended in October 1963, when Langlois returned to Rochester once more and found himself in the middle of a personal and professional tug-of-war between himself and Brooks and James Card. Nevertheless, Langlois’ fascination with Brooks continued. In 1974, an article in the Los Angeles Times quoted the film archivist as saying he was looking for the silent version of The Canary Murder Case.
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If you’re interested in learning more about Henri Langlois, I recommend a documentary, Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinémathéque. It “celebrates the man who cultivated cinema’s future by protecting its past.” The New York Post called it a “first rate documentary,” while the Village Voice described it as “a memoir of a lost kingdom”. Regrettably, Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinémathéque may or may not be out-of-print, but it may be available used on amazon.com or for loan through your local public or university library. In the past, it has been available through amazon prime, but now seems to be only available to view on-line on Kanopy – a movie streaming service available through libraries.
Though a bit long and in need of editing (especially its incongruous acid-rap passages), I enjoyed this documentary and found it interesting, and what’s more, it twice references Louise Brooks. One reference is to an early screening of Diary of a Lost Girl in the stairwell of a crowded Cinémathéque. Another is to the glittering shoe-buckles Brooks wore in A Girl in Every Port. They are one of the many treasures housed at the Cinémathéque, and are shown in the documentary. One other passage in the film may be of interest to fans of Brooks. A little more than three minutes into the film, Langlois recounts how he once came across a two page spread in Pour Vous, a French film magazine, listing the most acclaimed films ever made. “One day in 1934 in the newspaper Pour Vous I saw a two-page spread covered with enticing, absolutely great titles of films. It was a call to create a national film archive.” The article to which Langlois is referring is shown in the documentary. However, it’s not from 1934, but from May 19, 1932.
I recognized the article because I had blogged about it previously. The article, with illustrations from a handful of the films mentioned, is titled “Sauvons les films de repetoire” (or “Let’s save the repertoire films”) and subtitled “Pour Vous Établit une liste ideale en s’inspirant des suggestions de ses lecteurs” (which translates as “Pour Vous Establishes an ideal list based on the suggestions of its readers”). The article is a listing of the best films up to 1929, a kind of curated “reader’s poll”. The results are surprising, especially for fans of Brooks, as three of her films, A Girl in Every Port, Beggars of Life, and Diary of a Lost Girl, all made the list! Each were very popular in France, with the first mentioned film, Howard Hawks’ buddy bromance, spending nearly a year in various Parisian theaters. Left off the list was Pandora’s Box, which is the one Brooks’ film which seemingly most entranced Langlois. (The list of films ends with those released in 1929, and thus it also doesn’t include Prix de beaute, which was released in 1930 and was as celebrated in France as the previously mentioned films.)
By the way, there is another elusive documentary on Langlois. It is called Citizen Langlois (1994), and it is by Edgardo Cozarinsky. I had a bit of trouble tracking it down until I found it on Vimeo on Demand. Although there is a small amount of overlapping footage between the two documentaries, both are worth watching. Cozarinsky’s is in French, and doesn’t mention Brooks, but still there is some striking material, like the slow walk through the Cinémathéque and its Cabinet of Caligari sets, as well as a filmed statement by Lillian Gish in which she praises Langlois.
Some years ago, I went to Paris. One of the places I visited was the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, where I saw some of the treasures which Langlois collected over the years – including the shoe-buckles Brooks wore in A Girl in Every Port. The other place I visited was the Montparnasse cemetery, where Langlois is buried. His grave is remarkable – a work of art in itself, and unlike any grave I have ever seen. Back in 2009, Brooks’ fan Steve Robinson emailed me a couple of images he took at Langlois’s grave. Steve wanted me to share them. The first image is of the grave site, and the second is of a photographic collage on the gravestone which includes an image of Brooks from the backstage scene in Pandora’s Box. More images, including the entire sculptural grave and a large photo of its collage adornment, can be found on Flickr and Find a Grave. It is something you have to check out.
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| A Passion for Films | Henri Langlois’ grave | Close-up of the collage | Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinémathéque |
Langlois once said, “Films are like Persian rugs: you keep them at their best by using them. Before you can show an old film, it has to exist — that is, it has to have been conserved (in the archival sense). And in order to conserve it, first it has to have been “collected” (in the going-out-of-one’s-way-to-rescue-and-save-what-others-discard sense). The cinema is a means towards the acquisition of knowledge in the manner of Saint Thomas: by touch. Read all you like about love, but if you haven’t made love, your idea of it will be totally false.”
FURTHER READING / LISTENING / VIEWING : Besides his Wikipedia page, here are some of the books, links and media I checked-out while preparing this page, a few of which are only available only in French.
anonymous. “About Henri Langlois.” Cinémathèque Française.
— contains information on other film shorts featuring Langlois
anonymous. “Henri Langlois, 62, Historian of Film.” New York Times, January 14, 1977.
— obituary
Babula, Ryan. “Henri Langlois: The Auteur of the Cinémathèque Francaise.” The Cine-Files, Spring 2012.
Jacobs, Emma. “Exploring the Haphazard Archive of a Paris Film Legend.” Atlas Obscura, January 13, 2020.
— long illustrated article
Langlois, Georges Patrick and Glenn Myrent. Henri Langlois: First Citizen of Cinema. Twayne: Prentice Hall International, 1995.
Langlois, Henri. Trois Cents Ans de Cinéma. Cahiers du cinéma, 1986.
Paris, Barry. Louise Brooks. Knopf, 1989.
Roud, Richard. A Passion for Films: Henri Langlois and the Cinemathèque Française. Viking Press, 1983.
Scott, A.O. “A Great Man of Movies, Who Never Shot a Frame, Created a Way of Seeing.” New York Times, October 12, 2005.
— review of Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinémathéque
The Cinémathèque Française has a page listing nearly 200 films to watch online, of which more than 100 feature English-language subtitles. These films date from the late 1890s to today. There are almost a dozen about Henri Langlois. Among them is Harry Fishbach’s six part, more than four hour series of dialogues with Langlois about film history. The aforementioned Cinémathèque Française page can be found HERE. There are also film shorts of visits by various individuals to the Cinémathèque, including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Orson Welles and others.
Want to find out more? Here is a superb audio story on Henri Langlois from NPR’s Kitchen Sisters.