Issue 12
Notebook

Cartier Bresson’s Le Retour, or, What Is Wrong with this Picture?

Stuart Liebman
Queens College
Bio

Published 2011-07-01

Keywords

  • Holocaust,
  • documentary,
  • decisive moment,
  • photography

Abstract

This essay is a reevaluation of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s film Le Retour (1945) and, more generally, of his approach to filmmaking in the light of his theory of “the decisive moment”. Questions about how, when, by whom and why the film was produced are considered against the background of post-World War II French national mythmaking.

References

ASSOULINE, Pierre (2005). Henri Cartier- Bresson, A Biography. Londres: Thames & Hudson.

CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri (1952). Images à la Sauvette. París: Verve.

— (1952). The Decisive Moment. New York: Simon & Schuster.

— (1999). The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers. New York: Aperture.

— (2009). El instante decisivo. En Fotografiar del natural (pp.15-31). Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.

DRAME, Claudine (2007). Des Films pour le Dire: Reflets de la Shoah au cinéma, 1945-1985. Génova: Metropolis.

EPELBAUM, Didier (2005). Pas un mot, pas une ligne? París: Stock.

LEYDA, Jay (1964). Films Beget Films. New York: Hill & Wang.

LINDEPERG, Sylvie (1997). Les écrans de l’ombre. Paris: CNRS.

— (2000). Clio de 5 à 7. Les actualités de la Libération: archives du future. París: CNRS.

FRIZOT, Michel (2006). Unpredictable Glances (pp. 31-71). En Michel FRIZOT et alii (eds.) (2006). Henri Cartier-Bresson: Scrapbook. Photographs 1932-1946. Londres: Thames & Hudson.

MATARD-BONUCCI, Marie-Anne y Eduard LYNCH (1995). La Libération des Camps et le Retour des Déportés. Bruselas: Complexe.

ROUSSO, Henry (1991). The Vichy Syndrome. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

SIRE, Agnès (2006). Scrapbook Stories (pp. 9-29). En Michel FRIZOT et alii (eds.).

WIEVIORKA, Annette (1992). Déportation et génocide. París: Plon.

WORMSER-MIGOT, Olga (1985). Le Retour des Deportés: quand les Alliés ouvrirent les portes. Bruselas: Complexe.