Langlois, Henri

(1914-1977)

   Founder of the Cinémathèque Française. Born in 1914 in what was the Ottoman Empire, Henri Langlois moved to Paris as a child. He was an avid film buff from an early age. While in lycée, Langlois, along with his friend, Georges Franju, founded a ciné-club to help encourage others to love film as much as they did. The two friends would both go on to make significant contributions to French cinema, Franju as a director and Langlois, by virtue of his family's money, to cofound the Cinémathèque française, which is one of the most important holdings of films in the country. Because Langlois founded the Cinémathèque française when he did, he was able to amass and preserve a large number of silent films at precisely the moment they were disappearing. Without his intervention, many of the films in its possession today would have been lost. Langlois went on to encourage the creation of other similar archives, as well as a federation of archives throughout the world. Langlois remained the head of the Cinémathèque française until his death in 1977. He was ousted in 1968 for a brief period, in a scandal over his management of the institution, but was reinstated. When he died, it was clear that while he had seen to it that a significant number of films were obtained and archived, he had done little else to assure the integrity of the institution.