Jean Douchet

Jean Douchet (January 19, 1929 – November 22, 2019) was a French film director, historian, film critic and teacher who began his career in the early 1950s at Gazette du Cinéma and Cahiers du cinema with members of the future French New Wave. As a journalist Douchet wrote extensively about New Wave filmmakers, as well as such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, F. W. Murnau, Kenji Mizoguchi, Vincente Minnelli, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Daniel Pollet. He enabled Serge Daney to begin working for Cahiers. He also acted in small roles for such directors as Godard, Rohmer, François Truffaut, Jean Eustache, Jacques Rivette, Jean Pierre Lefebvre and François Ozon. He taught at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques and his students included Ozon, Émilie Deleuze and Xavier Beauvois. He was also involved with the Cinémathèque Française and regularly hosts screenings and events. For the Cinémathèque's 2010 tribute to the then recently deceased Éric Rohmer he made the documentary Claude et Éric, an interview with Claude Chabrol about Rohmer's early days at Cahiers du cinema. On November 22, 2019, the Cinémathèque Française announced that Jean Douchet had died at age 90.