bThe early essays of the most influential French film critic of the post-68 period.b piThe Footlightsi 1983 was the first book by Serge Daney, a film critic admired in his lifetime by Gilles Deleuze and Jean-Luc Godard and recognized since his premature death in 1992 as the most important French writer on film after Andr Bazin. iThe Footlightsi stands apart in Daney's body of work as the only collection of his essays he conceived of as a book, organizing his seminal pieces from iCahiers du Cinmai by theme and linking them with original texts that reflect in a personal voice on the doubts, battles, and illuminations of a generation of film lovers inspired by the explorations of Lacanian theory and roused by the collective aspirations of Maoist dogma. In pieces on fellow travelers Godard and StraubHuillet, on films ranging from Pasolini's iSali to Spielberg's iJawsi, and on the difference between film language and television discourse, Daney offers a definitive portrait of an era of radi