ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of Jacques Aumont’s life and writings since leaving Cahiers du cinéma in 1974. While many former Cahiers critics of the post-1968 era have taken teaching roles, Aumont was the only one to fully pursue an academic career. Writing his doctoral dissertation on the films of Eisenstein (published as Montage Eisenstein in 1979), he became a key figure in the formation of film studies in France in the 1970s and 1980s. In his prolific writings since that time (including major works such as L’Œil interminable, À quoi pensent les films and Matière d’images), Aumont has attempted to produce a scholarly account of the cinema that would place it within a broader system of the arts (with an emphasis on the relationship between cinema and painting) as well as devoting monographs to individual filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard.
