Decades Never Start on Time A Richard Roud Anthology

Richard Roud, film writer and co-founder and director of the New York Film Festival, was one of the most influential film critics of the twentieth century. Renowned for his close relationships with French New Wave directors such as Godard and Truffaut, he played a key role in bringing European art cinema to the attention of American and British audiences.

This anthology brings together selected writings from his published works with previously unpublished archival material – from an unfinished study of Truffaut, to extracts from his books on film-makers such as Straub-Huillet and Ophüls, and articles for The Guardian and Sight & Sound. Charting Roud's journey through the world of film festivals and film criticism from the 1950s to the 1980s, Decades Never Start on Time provides a fascinating insight into the flourishing film culture of the era.

With a preface by David Thomson.

Michael Temple is Reader in Film and Media at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. His books include The French Cinema Book, Jean Vigo and Jean-Luc Godard: Documents.

Karen Smolens is Richard Roud's niece. She attended her first New York Film Festival at age 12 where she saw her uncle moderate a press conference with Roberto Rossellini following a screening of Rossellini's film, The Rise of Louis XIV. She lives in Brookline, MA.

Acknowledgements
Foreword; David Thomson
Introduction; Michael Temple
Chronology; Karen Smolens
PART 1: 1956-1962
1.1 'Britain in America'
1.2 Max Ophüls: An Index (extract)
1.3 'Face to face: James Agee'
1.4 'Face to face: André Bazin'
1.5 'How to see a movie (in the USA)'
1.6 'Novel novel; fable fable?'
1.7 'National Film Theatre: the first ten years'
1.8 'The Left Bank: Marker, Varda, Resnais'
PART 2: 1963-1969
2.1 'Festival at the Lincoln Center'
2.2 'End of Bardolotry'
2.3 'Muriel observed'
2.4 'Cannes ho!'
2.5 'Rondo Galant: the world of Jacques Demy'
2.6 'The Red Desert'
2.7 'Object lesson'
2.8 'Anguish: Alphaville'
2.9 'New films'
2.10 'Film criticism in Britain'
2.11 'Masculin féminin'
2.12 'Far from Vietnam'
2.13 'A Langlois unto himself'
2.14 'Weekend in Paris'
2.15 'The end of the Cannes party'
2.16 'Minimal cinema: Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach'
2.17 'The Cossacks go in at Pesaro'
2.18 'If with no buts'
2.19 'Le Gai Savoir'
PART 3: 1970-1976
3.1 'The varieties of tyranny'
3.2 'Films to change the world?'
3.3 'Fathers and sons'
3.4 'Look back in shame'
3.5 'Going between'
3.6 'The international gravy train'
3.7 'Visconti misses the gondola'
3.8 Jean-Marie Straub (extracts)
3.9 'Daddy of 'em all'
3.10 'The dragon…'
3.11 'It takes two to tango'
3.12 'How can we know the dancer from the dance?'
3.13 'Hollywood embers'
3.14 'Apple pie bedlam'
3.15 'The Rules of the Game'
3.16 'Hold the front page'
3.17 'The Passenger'
3.18 'Film of the century'
3.19 'Memorandum on processes of prospection and selection'
3.20 'Movies versus motion pictures'
PART 4: 1977-1983
4.1 'Henri Langlois'
4.2 'The Left Bank revisited'
4.3 'The baggy-trousered philanthropist'
4.4 'Robert Bresson'
4.5 'Feuillade and the serial'
4.6 'Jean Renoir to 1939'
4.7 'London and New York'
4.8 'Gross can be beautiful'
4.9 'Biter bit'
4.10 A Passion for Films (extracts)
4.11 'The first foreign-language film I ever saw…'
4.12 'Melville'
PART 5: 1984-1989
5.1 'Decades Never Start On Time' (extracts)
5.2 'The moral taste of Lotte Eisner'
5.3 'Remembering Losey'
5.4 'An Untitled Biography of Truffaut' (extract)
Bibliography
Index