The early history of cinema is characterized by the dominance of two major French-based production and distribution companies, namely Léon Gaumont’s (1864–1946) Gaumont and the Pathé Brothers’ Pathé. Within this landscape of industrial concentration, Léon Siritzky (1883–1955) – owner of the third-largest distribution chain of the period – occupies a lesser-known yet significant position. Authored by Serge Siritzky (1945 -), the grandson of Léon, Le cinéma était leur pays (2024) chronicles the three generation historical trajectory of the Siritzky family. This meticulously crafted monograph may be credited as a timely intervention aimed at rectifying the longstanding historiographical neglect of the Siritzky family’ cinematic legacy. The cover illustration portrays Israel -wLéon- Siroshkine (Siritzky) in a fez, holding a film reel next to elder son Samuel (Sammy) with an absent-minded smile, who is also the author’s father.

The book is organised into twenty-seven short chapters, along with an appendix containing tribunal records and Siritzky family albums, and positions itself as a corrective to the historiographical neglect surrounding the family’s contributions to early film culture. Accompanied by family photographs and archival documents, the book traces the Siritzkys’ forced displacements, entrepreneurial strategies, and enduring influence on film exhibition and distribution networks.

The first chapter is devoted to presenting the Brooklyn/New York years of Léon Siritzky and his daily life interactions with cinemagoers. The subsequent chapter sketches how Léon Siritzky, originally Israel Siroshkine, overcame The Pogrom of 1905 in Odessia/The Russian Empire and WWI and established film exhibition networks in Kadıköy/Constantinople. What emerges as especially salient is how drive-in cinemas were first introduced in Haidar Pasha meadow/Constantinople by Léon Siritzky. An enduring mistake in contextualizing Léon Siritzky’s years in Constantinople lies the largely neglected issue of his Ottoman citizenship and his rivalry with prominent exhibitors such as Cemil Filmer, whose memoirs (1984, pp. 106–107) corroborate Siritzky’s contentious business environment during the occupation years of Constantinople. Since the third chapter initially charts Siritzky’s migratory trajectory from Marseille to Paris, it ends up with his acquisition of the former music hall Le Chantecler on Avenue de Clichy. According to a Russian newspaper clipping, the Le Chantecler cinema gained notable acclaim in Europe for screening innovative short films by renowned Russian directors, including Władysław Starewicz (Akdağ, 2025). A family-run enterprise, distinct responsibilities were assigned to each member in the Le Chantecler: Léon as projectionist; Rose, his wife, as ticket collector; Joseph (Jo), the younger son, as publicity hawker; Salomon (Samy), elder son, as sweeper and publicity hawker; and Klara, Léon’s daughter, as organist.

The fourth chapter provides a detailed mapping of Siritzky’s film distribution & exhibition network in early 1930s France, encompassing eleven well-known cinemas such as Le Maine and L’Excelsior. What I find particularly noteworthy is Marcel Pagnol’s encounter with Léon Siritzky, which ultimately facilitated Siritzky’s subsequent investments in French directors, namely Claude Berri, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. While the fifth chapter is revolving around programming of French cult films such as La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, France, 1937), Un carnet de bal (Julien Duvivier, France, 1937) and Ignace (Pierre Colombier, France, 1937), the sixth chapter turns to the antisemitic climate in Vichy France, which culminated in the expropriation of Siritzky’s cinema chains by a decision of the La Propagandastaffel. In the subsequent chapter, the author elaborates on how Siritzky undertook decisive steps in the rising cauldron of chaos, much like in the case of screening of the Warner Bros’ production, Je suis un espion allemand (Anatole Litwak, the USA, 1939).

Whereas chapter eight offers a preliminary discussion of letters between General Commissioner for Cinema M. Guy de Carmoy and Secretary-General of the Paris Cinematographic Theatre Union Jacques Vandal, Chapter Nine details the family reunion dinner at La Marjolaine and the discussion of the family’s emigration to the United States. It is dramatically portrayed how each Siritzky family member has been dispersed all over the world following this tough decision. Through the tenth chapter, the author reasonably argues that Boris Morros, a chief of musical dramas in Paramount, played a pivotal role in integrating the Siritzkys in the United States. Jack Cohn, who was the head of Columbia Studio, was another key figure in the appointment of Samy and Jo as a cinema manager within the Columbia chain. The eleventh chapter commences with the Cameron Theater, the first film venue in Brooklyn/the United States managed by the Siritzky family, and subsequently the author directs reader’s attention to the birth of Léon’s grandsons: Alain and Serge.

From chapter twelve onwards, the book shifts focus to the liberation movement in France and the theme of homesickness, culminating in Léon Siritzky’s role as the principal distributor of French films in the United States. While chapter thirteen begins with the affective dimensions of Léon and Rose’s return to Paris, the author also elaborates on the transitory period between Nazi Germany backed La Société de gestion et d’exploitation de cinemas (SOGEC) to liberated L’Union générale cinématographique (UGC). The subsequent two chapters draw a panorama of legal cases between Léon and Guy de Carmoy (of the SOGEC), with the sixteenth chapter illuminating the details on Léon Siritzky’s unexpected death in 1955. In chapter seventeen, attention is devoted to how Léon’s sons, Jo and Sammy, took over the management of the Lord Byron Cinema and come up with a brand-new distribution company, Athos Film. What merits additional attention is that Jo and Samy not only assumed the distribution rights for Alfred Hitchcock’s films, but also for those of the Soviet studio Mosfilm.

The eighteenth and nineteenth chapters delve into how Siritzky’s cinema venues were prioritized to screen nouvelle vague auteur films, namely Les 400 coups (François Truffaut, France, 1959), Le Beau Serge (Claude Chabrol, France, 1959) or Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, France, 1959). The twentieth chapter, by contrast, examines Alain’s involvement in the family enterprise, particularly his role resembling that of a publicity hawker and Serge’s Bar-Mitsvah ceremony. The twenty-first chapter further illustrates the renewal of contract between Gaumont and Siritzky’s cinema chains. The twenty-second chapter describes a meeting between Charlie Bludhorn and the Siritzky brothers, where they discussed the commission rate for Paramount International’s purchase of Famous Players -the United States’ second-largest cinema chain- as well as ECCP and Athos. Following the agreement, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (the USA, 1974), Randal Kleiser’s Grease (the USA, 1978) and Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark (the USA, 1983) were greeted with strong interest in France. The subsequent chapter introduces a new phase of distribution collaboration with Parafrance, overseen by Samy, Jo, and Destnounis. Jo and Sammy undertook the production of Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (France, 1967), upon his proposal to Athos Films. What particularly drew my attention was the public controversy surrounding the distribution of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Dernier Tango à Paris (France, Italy, the USA, 1972), especially given the censorship debates prompted by its explicit nudity. While chapter twenty-four focuses on the adaptation of best-seller novel Emanuelle, written by Eric Losfeld into a narrative film, chapter twenty-five addresses production proposals coming from promising French directors. The final two chapters discuss the unsubstantiated allegations against Léon Siritzky, a Jewish cinema manager, claiming he supported the Nazi regime and profited from the ‘aryanization’ of the French film industry, and they show how the Mattéoli Commission’s findings help dispel the long-standing misconceptions about these accusations against the Siritzky family in France.

Although the book offers valuable insights into the Siritzkys’ legal struggles, wartime dispossession, and postwar rehabilitation, its selective treatment of evidence and uneven narrative pacing limit its scholarly utility. Incorporating the Siritzky family photographs within the pertinent chapters, rather than appending them at the end, would foster readers’ immersion in the family’s historical narrative. A notable limitation in the book’s overall readability, especially evident in its later chapters, is the persistent repetition of identical incidents, especially for the USA years. Moreover, significant contexts such as early film distribution and exhibition circle in the Ottoman State, how Siritzky family has been given credited in Russian cinema historiography remain underexplored despite the family’s deep entanglement with these histories. It would also have been useful to include the family correspondence in Ottoman Turkish, Russian and English in the appendix. Ultimately, Le cinéma était leur pays stands as an important but methodologically constrained contribution – one that invites, and indeed requires, further critical research beyond the author’s familial vantage point. For scholars of French cinema, Jewish diasporic history, and early exhibition networks, the book offers a foundation upon which more analytically robust and historiographically ambitious research should be constructed.

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