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Robert Bresson’s Lancelot Du Lac [pictured] included in deal.

French mini-major Gaumont and Eclair, the European cinema technologies specialists and part of Ymagis group, are joining forces to restore more than 100 feature films.

The films will be selected from Gaumont’s catalogue. The deal is an extension of a pre-existing partnership that has already seen Eclair restore a number of the company’s film library using digital technology.

In 2016, Eclair restored 25 Gaumont features, including Louis Malle’s My Dinner With André (1981), Maurice Tourneur’s Samson (1936) and André Barsacq’s Le Rideau Rouge (1952).

Titles selected for 2017 include Julien Duvivier’s Untel Père Et Fils (1945) and L’homme Du Jour (1937) Jacques Doillon’s La Femme Qui Pleure (1979) and Robert Bresson’s Lancelot Du Lac (1974).

Since Eclair launched its restoration division in 2000, more than 750 films have been restored by the company.

Yves Gringuillard heads up the restoration and preservation side of the business, which has a staff...

Translators introduction: This article by Mireille Latil Le Dantec, the first of two parts, was originally published in issue 40 of Cinématographe, September 1978. The previous issue of the magazine had included a dossier on "La qualité française" and a book of a never-shot script by Jean Grémillon (Le Printemps de la Liberté or The Spring of Freedom) had recently been published. The time was ripe for a re-evaluation of Grémillon's films and a resuscitation of his undervalued career. As this re-evaluation appears to still be happening nearly 40 years later—Grémillon's films have only recently seen DVD releases and a 35mm retrospective begins this week at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens—this article and its follow-up gives us an important view of a French perspective on Grémillon's work by a very perceptive critic doing the initial heavy-lifting in bringing the proper attention to the filmmaker's work.

Filmmaker maudit?...

'Dostoevskian' French actor with an aura of tormented youth

With his emaciated but hypnotically handsome face and lithe body, the French actor Laurent Terzieff, who has died of respiratory infection aged 75, graced the stage and films for more than half a century. There was always an aura of tormented youth about Terzieff which he carried into the classic roles of his maturity such as Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV (1989) and Shakespeare's Richard II (1991). His perfect diction and rhythmic precision made his rendering of Jean Cocteau's narration of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex in Bob Wilson's production at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 1996 particularly exciting.

Terzieff's special talents were used by many of the great theatre producers of the day: Jean-Louis Barrault, Peter Brook, Roger Planchon, Maurice Garrel, Roger Blin and André Barsacq. He also directed dozens of plays, many at the Théâtre du Lucernaire in Montparnasse. Paradoxically, given his tormented persona as an actor,...