CALLING ALL CINEMA TIME TRAVELLERS

We heard it through the grapevine (merci Rachel) that there is a handy stack of archives just waiting to be discovered on Gallica.

For those of you who don't know (and shame on you, because you really should), Gallica is the Bibliothèque nationale de France's digital library. The website overflows with newspaper cuttings, old maps, interactive objects, images, videos, podcasts, manuscripts, photos, online magazines, eBooks, I could go on and on and on.

Basically, it's like Culturethèque times one billion - and they have a blog....but the Culturethèque one is better, don't you think? The answer to that question is most definitely "yes".

Back to business. Have you ever said to yourself "I really could do with a time-travelling machine to read all the film reviews from a certain period."

Well, ask no more! You can now flick through loads of film critics published in the same era of the film release.

Let's have a little peak at what they had to say about L'assassin habite au 21 dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot back in the fervant forties.

"Ce qu'on y trouve de plus étonnant, c'est imagination qui est dépensée...on croirait un match entre le scénariste et le dialoguiste"

[which I can translate to..."What we have found most surprising, is the amount of imagination used...it's almost like a match between the screenwriter and dialogist"]

Like the sound of this film? Lucky you, because L'assassin habite au 21 is showing at the Institut français on the 6th of November.

Click right here to read the rest of the reviews...or here to read some other ones for other films.

I leave you with an interesting fact: Gallica actually means 'a compact fragrant European rose having usually pink, red, or crimson flowers that yield an oil used especially in perfumery.'

Fancy that!