Festival du film maudit 1949/1950

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The term film maudit – literally, “cursed film”– was coined for the legendary 1949 Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz for which a jury lead by Jean Cocteau curated and celebrated a group of films criminally overlooked and neglected at the time – a lineup that included such now-canonical pictures as L’Atalante (1934), The Long Voyage Home (1940) and Les Dames du Bois de Bologne (1945). A polemical landmark in the history of postwar French film culture, Cocteau’s festival also designated as films maudit a number of deliberately shocking, outré and bold films, such as Fireworks (1947) and The Shanghai Gesture (1941).

From caboosobooks.net:

caboose is pleased to make available the extremely rare 43-page catalogue for the 1949 Festival du film maudit in Biarritz, France, organised by Jean Cocteau, André Bazin, Roger Leenhardt and others with writings, artwork and photographs by a who’s who of the most celebrated, overlooked and ‘accursed’ artists, filmmakers and writers of the day. Our copy is even signed by Jean Cocteau!

caboose is planning a translated edition of the catalogue with commentary, but in the meantime you can view free of charge the original French edition, an extreme rarity that many film buffs and historians have never laid eyes on.

The films shown in the festival are not listed in the catalogue, so we are listing them here (to the best of our knowledge—corrections welcome), in chronological order of production. Thanks to Colin Crisp for helping establish the list. Following the list of films from the first festival in 1949 is a list of films from the second and final Festival du film maudit in 1950, in the order they were screened. This, we believe, is a definitive list.

missing from the list: unknown films listed under “Short Russian Films” and selection of “Pete Smith Specialties” (U.S.A., 1940s)