“You just need to show the public good films to show them that they can like it” – Libération

This Friday, December 20 will mark the end of the career of the host at the head of the cult show, after forty-eight years of film activism. Interview with the film distributor.

At 83 years old, 48 of which were spent at the head of Midnight cinema, Patrick Brion bows out. If the show will continue in a new form (according to France Télévisions), it is a major page that is turning with the retirement of this legendary film buff.

Beyond the high symbolic status of Midnight cinema, what do you know about its audience? What role does the show still play, and with whom?

Until the 90s, there was a lot of audience. Many people still approach me today with memories of their discoveries in the 80s. It’s always a bit of the same stories: I was a teenager, I never missed, my parents stopped me from watching, but they left the door open, so I looked into the conflagration… There is a whole folklore around it, a whole magic. Today, its influence is obviously less important, less structuring, I no longer have the feeling of forming generations of young film fans. The show is watched, but many catch up on the Internet, it is not the same secret, almost religious meeting.

We know this myth of film buffs who learned about the humanities thanks to your work as a smuggler, but how did you learn to be a film buff yourself?

I started to be interested in cinema in the mid-1950s. You have to appreciate what an exceptional period it was, with neighborhood theaters absolutely everywhere. To see the gr