Michel Ciment

Michel Jean Ciment (French: [simɑ̃]; 26 May 1938 – 13 November 2023) was a French film critic, author, and editor of the cinema magazine Positif. He was also a maître de conférences in American civilization at the University of Paris-VII. Ciment was born in the 9th arrondissement of Paris on 26 May 1938, the son of Alexander and Hélène Cziment. His father, a Hungarian Jew, had settled in the French capital in the 1920s and narrowly escaped the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in 1942, fleeing to Normandy where he was later joined by his son. Ciment's French mother was also Jewish, but kept this fact hidden until just before her death (he was baptised and raised as a Catholic). He attended the Lycée Condorcet, then enrolled in a Classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he was influenced by the teaching of philosopher Gilles Deleuze. He studied English at the Sorbonne, and in 1958–59, was a Fulbright scholar at Amherst College in the United States, where he gained a knowledge of American history. Ciment was noted for his love for American film, somewhat unusual in his French cultural environment. He credited his Americophilia to his memories of the liberation of Paris by American soldiers in 1944, when he was a child. Although Ciment had written about cinema in a student publication, his first mainstream film review (of The Trial) was published in Positif magazine in 1963.