2017 Essays

Christiane Mendelys

Fee, Annie

Christiane Mendelys’ career as a mime, actress, film critic, and acting teacher mirrored the major developments in French cinema culture, from the early days of cinema as a music-hall attraction, through the first attempts at “theatrical cinema” for middle-class audiences in the mid-1900s and the emergence of newspaper film criticism in the mid-1910s, to, finally, the height of cinema popularity in 1920s Paris. However, unlike fellow critics such as Louis Delluc, Émile Vuillermoz, and Léon Moussinac, her contribution to the development of cinema culture in France has been all but overlooked. While their work circulates in edited volumes, accessing the film criticism of Mendelys requires entering the ornate corridors of the Palais Garnier Opera House, where newspaper clippings of her writings are archived.