Under the auspices of simplicity: Roger Leenhardt's new realism and the aesthetic history of objectif 49

The scholarly literature on the ciné-club Objectif 49 (1948-50) tends to focus on its institutional history. For this reason, historians have yet to account for the development of its aesthetic outlook. Objectif 49 attempted to launch a nouvelle avant-garde, and at its signature event, the Festival du Film Maudit of 1949, Jean Cocteau, one of the club's copresidents, stated that in today's avant-garde, "boldness" presents itself "under the auspices of simplicity." Using previously unexamined materials, I argue that the club's aesthetics owe much to the critic and filmmaker Roger Leenhardt, whose postwar career has never been exposed to systematic study. In the essays he published between 1945 and 1949 and in his debut feature, Les dernières vacances (The Last Vacation, 1948), he showed how French cinema could overcome a crisis of content and "aestheticized" style. Not only did this new realism position him as a leading figure in the club, it also sheds light on his role in the founding of Cahiers du cinéma.