Content area
Full Text
Who was Max Linder (1880-1925), and what do we really know about his "cinema celebrity"? Those are questions Lisa Stein Haven wants to answer. What prodded her interest? The relative paucity of attention to Linder in Englishlanguage film histories and the recent overdue attention in French studies of his film work, following the death, in 2017, of Maud Linder, who had written two memoirs of her father.1 Unable to meet Maud or to access material in the newly formed Institute Max Linder in Lyon, Haven had done much original research, before the COVID pandemic, in at least 18 archives, libraries, and personal collections in France, Austria, the Czech Republic, and the United States - the source of the book's hundred photos. She also benefited from work on Linder generously shared by JeanClaude Seguin and Georg Renken. That research forms the basis of her fine, if incomplete (she admits) life story of Linder. Although she includes some analysis of selected films, she points to fuller interpretations found elsewhere in both French and English. That said, Haven's text makes up just two-thirds of the entire book. Filling the last one hundred plus pages is Catherine Cormon's invaluable Linder filmography, indebted to Renken. Extensive and detailed, it includes each film's title (many in other languages too), length, projection speed, black & white or tinted/toned, release dates, exhibition venues, and archive sources. In short, The Rise & Fall of Max Linder really is two books in one - a double pleasure.
Making use of Maud Linder, Haven's biography is particularly good on Linder's early years. Born Gabriel Leuvielle in a small village in southwestern France, he went to school in Bordeaux, became skilled at fencing, and began performing on stage, adopting the pseudonym of Max Linder. In 1904, he left for Paris to take small roles in several major...