The early essays of the most influential French film critic of the post-68 period. The
Footlights (1983) was the first book by Serge Daney a film critic admired in his lifetime by
Gilles Deleuze and Jean-Luc Godard and recognized since his premature death in 1992 as the most
important French writer on film after André Bazin. The Footlights stands apart in Daney’s body
of work as the only collection of his essays he conceived of as a book organizing his seminal
pieces from Cahiers du Cinéma by theme and linking them with original texts that reflect in a
personal voice on the doubts battles and illuminations of a generation of film lovers
inspired by the explorations of Lacanian theory and roused by the collective aspirations of
Maoist dogma. In pieces on fellow travelers Godard and Straub Huillet on films ranging from
Pasolini’s Saló to Spielberg’s Jaws and on the difference between film language and television
discourse Daney offers a definitive portrait of an era of radical hope and disappointment.
