Luc Moullet

Luc Moullet
Luc Moullet in 2009
Born	(1937-10-14) 14 October 1937 (age 79) Paris, France
Citizenship	French
Occupation	Film critic, director, screenwriter, actor
Years active	1954–present
Notable work	Brigitte et Brigitte
Movement	French New Wave

Luc Moullet (French: [mulɛ]; born 14 October 1937 in Paris) is a French film critic and filmmaker, and a member of the Nouvelle Vague or French New Wave. Moullet's films are known for their humor, anti-authoritarian leanings and rigorously primitive aesthetic, which is heavily influenced by his love of American B-movies.

Though such influential filmmakers and critics as Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Marie Straub, Jacques Rivette and Jonathan Rosenbaum have consistently praised his work, he has never found commercial success, even in his native France.

Moullet is known to frequently act in his movies.

Moullet began writing for Cahiers du cinéma at the age of eighteen, where he was an early champion of the films of Samuel Fuller. Though reportedly initially disliked by François Truffaut, the brash critic found a defender in a young Jean-Luc Godard. In one of his articles for the Cahiers (published in the March 1959) Moullet stated that "Morality is a question of tracking shots", a phrase which, along with Jean-Luc Godard's alternative, formulated shortly afterwards ("Traveling shots are a question of morality"), has since become well known in French cinema studies.

Moullet's first short film was intended to be shown before Godard's second feature, Le Petit Soldat, which was banned due to its political content. After several more shorts failed to attract attention, Moullet returned to criticism, authoring major studies on several directors (most notably a book on Fritz Lang which Brigitte Bardot is seen reading in Godard's Contempt).