Realism’s new horizons: Roger Leenhardt’s theoretical shift after Trois portraits d’un oiseau qui n’existe pas/Three Portraits of a Bird that Doesn’t Exist (Robert Lapoujade, 1963)

Late in his career, filmmaker and theorist Roger Leenhardt (1903–1985) published two enigmatic statements that suggest that he was increasingly sceptical of the idea, which he himself had defended in the 1930s, that film’s realist potential depended on the medium’s photochemical capacity to create faithful imprints of reality. In previously unexamined passages from his essay ‘Cinéma et les arts plastiques’ (1964) and his interview-based memoir Les Yeux ouverts (1979), he argued that animated shorts, along with the film sur l’art, were opening onto new vistas of exploration in realist aesthetics. This article addresses the conditions that led to, and the implications of, this seemingly paradoxical ‘lost development’ in French realist thought. By situating Leenhardt’s late theory in its proper context, namely his brief collaboration with painter Robert Lapoujade on the abstract animation Trois portraits d’un oiseau qui n’existe pas (Robert Lapoujade, 1963), we not only uncover the theory’s social and conceptual roots, but discover a fresh approach to a paradox that continues to grip film theorists: whether cinema can continue to be a means for making discoveries about reality in an age where new media grants filmmakers the power to manipulate every aspect of the image.