French writer, film critic, filmmaker and collagist, born on 12 December 1926 in Port-Lyautey (now Kenitra, Morocco), died on 20 October 1996 in Paris.
Life
Robert Benayoun joined the Surrealist movement in 1948 and entered André Breton’s inner circle. He contributed essays, poems and collages to the group’s reviews: Médium, Le Surréalisme, même, Bief, La Brèche, L’Archibras.
In March 1951, with Ado Kyrou, Gérard Legrand and Georges Goldfayn, he founded the Surrealist review L’Âge du cinéma, of which he was editor-in-chief until it folded in 1952. In 1954 he joined the editorial board of Positif, to which he remained attached for more than thirty years, and there waged a long polemic against Cahiers du cinéma and the New Wave, notably with the article “Le roi est nu” (The Emperor Has No Clothes, 1962).
He turned to directing himself with Paris n’existe pas (1969), selected for the Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival, then Sérieux comme le plaisir (1975), co-written with Jean-Claude Carrière. He is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery.
The work
His writings cross Surrealism, humour and nonsense: Anthologie du non-sens (1957), Érotique du surréalisme (1965), Le Nonsense (1977), Les Dingues du nonsense, de Lewis Carroll à Woody Allen (1986). He devoted books to animated film (Le Dessin animé après Walt Disney, 1961) and to filmmakers: John Huston (1966), Jerry Lewis (Bonjour Monsieur Lewis, 1972), Alain Resnais (1980), Buster Keaton (Le Regard de Buster Keaton, 1982).
Alongside his writing, he practised collage, published in the Surrealist reviews.
Exhibitions and collections
- Surrealist Prelude, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, Paris, 7 June to 6 July 2024
At the gallery
- Surrealist Prelude 2024