Cinema: death at 78 of David Lynch, giant of the American 7th art

«It is with great regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and artist, David Lynch», indicated the family of the filmmaker in a press release posted on its page Facebook. The director, author of ten feature films released between 1977 and 2006, had captivated a cohort of admirers fascinated by the disturbing and strange beauty of his films and won a Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1990 for “Sailor and Lula”.

«There is a great void in the world now that he is no longer with us. But as he said: “keep your eyes on the donut, not the hole”», adds his family, an allusion to one of the artist’s humorous traits. The family has not revealed a cause of death, but last summer, the thin-looking man with a silver puff revealed on X that he suffered from pulmonary emphysema, “the price to pay» for “years of cigarettes».

Born in 1946 in Montana (northwest), David Lynch is considered a master of cinema who revolutionized the image and marked his art with the disturbing, enigmatic and haunting atmosphere of his films. From the black-and-white zombie story “Eraserhead” (1977), his first feature film financed by odd jobs, to “Mulholland Drive” (2001), via “Blue Velvet” (1986) and “Lost Highway” (1997), most of his works have become cult.

Honorary Oscar

«Such an original and unique voice will be missed. His films have already stood the test of time and they will stand it forever», paid tribute to him the cinema monster Steven Spielberg, who praised a “visionary dreamer» in Variety.

«His films seem to go directly from his subconscious to yours. It’s hard to find an artist who was both so radical and had such a significant impact on culture», Added to AFP the artistic director of the New York Film Festival, Dennis Lim, author of a book on Lynch (“David Lynch: The Man from Another Place”).

One of his masterpieces remains “Elephant Man” (1980), a moving film, and one of his most accessible to the general public, on the true story of Joseph Merrick, a man affected by deformity and displayed as a fairground beast during the era of Victorian England. With John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins as headliners, it received eight Oscar nominations and won the César for best foreign film in France (1982).

In 1990, David Lynch created “Twin Peaks”, a legendary and pioneering series which revolutionized the genre and transformed millions of viewers into detectives haunted by the mysteries it unraveled over two seasons. A quarter of a century later, he did it again with “Twin Peaks: The Return” (2017).

Nominated several times for the Oscars, David Lynch finally received an honorary statuette in 2019 for his entire filmography. In France, he won another César for best foreign film for “Mulholland Drive”, a distressing, enigmatic thriller full of hallucinations, which plays with the pretenses of Hollywood and its crooked producers. Naomi Watts plays the role of an actress meeting a mysterious woman suffering from amnesia, before everything is reversed in a twist that fans are still debating today.

His last feature film, “Inland Empire” (2006), had less impact and David Lynch then devoted himself to transcendental meditation and other forms of artistic expression, such as painting, music and short films . “Things have changed a lot in 11 years, including the way people think about cinema.“, he confided during an interview with AFP in 2017, on the occasion of the return of “Twin Peaks”. “And the things that are successful at the box office aren’t the things I wanted to do“, he added.

«It’s a beautiful day with a golden sun and a big blue sky», concluded the filmmaker’s family in their message on Facebook, paraphrasing his interventions in short videos broadcast on social networks.