Jean Mitry

Jean Mitry on the cover of The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema

Jean Mitry (7 November 1907, Soissons, Aisne – 18 January 1988, La Garenne-Colombes) was a French film theorist, critic and filmmaker, a co-founder of France's first film society, and, in 1938, of the Cinémathèque Française.

The first lecturer of film aesthetics in France, Mitry was one of the first intellectuals responsible for, in the words of Dudley Andrew, "taking film studies out of the era of the film club and into that of the university." His definitive works are largely considered to be The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema and Semiotics and the Analysis of Film.

Mitry was one of few major film theorists who worked in film production himself. He edited Alexandre Astruc's short film Le Rideau Cramoisi (1953) and directed two films of his own, Pacific 231 (1949), set to Arthur Honegger's music, and Images pour Debussy (1952), set to the music of Claude Debussy.

Selected filmography

• The Enigma of the Folies-Bergere (1959)

Works

• The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema
• Semiotics and the Analysis of Film