An American in Paris (Film).(Peter Scarlet)(Brief Article)(Interview)

Since it was founded in 1936, the Cinematheque Francaise has become one of the film world's most revered institutions. French film masters like Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut found adoring audiences there, as well as a place where their films would be assured of safekeeping. The sprawling archives at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris house some 40,000 restored films from around the world. Despite frequent cooperation between the center and American studios, many Frenchmen have long felt their film industry is threatened by the Hollywood machine. In January, Peter Scarlet, the former director of the San Francisco film festival, was named director. Scarlet, a 57-year-old New York native, spoke with NEWSWEEK's Scott Johnson. Excerpts:

JOHNSON: How did you discover it?

SCARLET: After college I took a trip around Europe. I was hitchhiking from Munich to Paris and I got picked up by someone who started talking about the Cinematheque. So I went. The programming was completely surreal. You could have a Japanese monster movie followed by an MGM musical or a silent Russian film. I started coming day after day. It was hypnotic... You can place that in the context of what the French had done decades before with jazz. Americans were saying forget it, and [the French] gave it value and protected it and saved it.

Why did the French choose an American to head the CF?

I'm probably the least American American they could find. There have been a number of problems here. I also know a lot of people in the French film world. I care about French cinema, and I have some knowledge of it.

The French are pretty critical of Hollywood. Do you think your nomination was a way to influence the way Americans think about films?

I think that with things like Universal Vivendi, the French industry feels like it needs to do more English-language production, which is pretty controversial. It's a tough struggle, but this is one of the only countries in the world that's protecting its films. If you go to damn near any other country you can think of, with the single exception I know of being Iran, American films are about all you can see. Here, French films still have 30 to 35 percent of the market. That's far from what it was a few years ago, but it's better than zero or two.