What Is a Cursed Film

AT THE beginning of August there opened in Biarritz the Festival of the Cursed Film, a festival very different from all others, which consisted in presenting to the public films that either have never been released, as a result of the timidity of distributors, or have never been appreciated by the general public. As indicated, the curse which attaches to certain films may issue from two distinct sources. And it seems that the public, in spite of its relative lack of culture, often shows itself to be a better judge than the captains of the motion picture industry. In the August 15 number of L'Ecran Franfais, Andre Bazin wrote: "The distributors put a curse upon La Bataille du rail, La Derniere Chance, Quatre pas dans les nuages, and recently Jour de fete [he could have added Zero de conduite and Farrebique] before they were welcomed triumphantly by the public." The opinion that it is the conservatism and the pusillanimity of the distributors that most often compromises the career of original works is echoed by Claude Roy, who accuses the commercial directors of the cinema of stifling the very creation of films that are out of the common run: "The true festival of the cursed film," he wrote in the same number of L'Ecran Franfais, "ought to be held in limbo where sleep the still-born films that the rules of the commercial game (or the stupidity of the leaders of the industry) have condemned. The true cursed film does not exist at all, and it is only in a necropolis of manuscripts that one may celebrate its sabbath."