The Mask and the Feather

History

This show is one of the oldest in French radio. It was created on November 13 , 1955by Michel Polac and François-Régis Bastide , merging two previous programs, one concerning the theater, the other the literature. It was broadcast from 1956 on Paris Inter , the ancestor of France Inter , and became the prototype of the cultural radio program for the general public. The cinema enters there from October 15th, 1957 . In 1960 , in response to an internal note from the ORTF management urging producers to reveal no signatories of the Manifesto 121 , the show is scuttled (after consultation debaters, Jean-Louis Bory, Guy Dumur , Alain Bosquet ) by one of the days of entertainment, the writer Jérôme Peignot ² , and is suspended for six months ³ .

Michel Polac left the show in 1970 . In 1982 , Pierre Bouteiller took the direction of the show in replacement of Bastide. The direct is privileged, but the interventions of the public little by little spread. The program gradually changes from two hours to one hour. Jérôme Garcin succeeds Pierre Bouteiller in 1989 .

For several years, the programs have been recorded at Studio 104 of the Maison de la Radio in Paris on Thursday evening. They are in “live conditions” without cuts or editing. However, the team may move to provincial cities like the January 30 , 2003in Orléans, where a program was recorded in the great cinema hall of les Carmes, or regularly in Lyon on the occasion of the Festival of Lights, of which France Inter is a partner.

In 2005 on the occasion of its 50 ^th  anniversary, the show received the honor Laurier Radio, presented by audiovisual Paris Club ⁴ . More recently, Le Figaro highlights in 2013 the independence of critics of the Mask and their claimed subjectivity – not hesitating to “debunk the statues of the stars of the arts and letters” – the absence of a promotional approach and the participation of the public (through the mail read on the air at the beginning of each broadcast and any live interventions) ⁵ .

The show brings together about 580,000 listeners according to the study Médiamétrie 2008 ⁶ – this very good score placing it “leader” of the radio media of this time slot on week-end ⁷ .

Critics of the Mask

Critics speaking at the Mask and the Pen in 2015 are marked with an asterisk. The press organ to which they belong, or belonged at the time of their participation in the program, is mentioned in parentheses.

Mask Audience Award

Every year since 1990 , at the initiative of Jérôme Garcin , the listeners of the Mask and the Plume are encouraged to nominate their best French and foreign film of the year ^9 , 10 .

Generic

The musical indicative of the credits of the Masque is “La Fileuse” ( Romance without lyrics in C major , opus 67, n ° 4) by Félix Mendelssohn , by Daniel Barenboïm (DG) ¹¹ . This musical excerpt was chosen by François-Régis Bastide after the suicide of Bory because its melody reminded him of the missing journalist ¹² . The peculiarity of the credits is that the announcement of the title of the show by Jerome Garcin is not recorded, the latter announcing itself for each program, on the musical theme of “Mask”.

Notes and references