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Do revolutionary minds ultimately embrace safer, conventional wisdom? That's what Emilie Bickerton argues in her incisive book, "A Short History of Cahiers du Cinema." Cahiers du Cinema -- the venerable journal of world cinema criticism / activism -- has done just that. It's as if Entertainment Weekly had started as a serious chronicle of cinematic inquiry.
Founded in 1951 in Paris, Cahiers rallied for a crucial re-evaluation of standards of taste in the world of French film criticism. "In" were films that celebrated France and the French experience. "Out" were Orson Welles, film noir and Hitchcock -- somewhat surprising to learn considering that these are now so universally loved. The early critics followed a new creative progression -- as Jacques Rivette put it, "The only true criticism of a film is another film" -- and Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut had...