During a period of intense debates on the great potentials of sound cinema, Emile Vuillermoz and the violinist Jacques Thibaud set up, in Lyon, a particular and independent production company “La Compagnie des Grandes Artistes Internationaux”, aiming at the realisation of short and medium features based on musical works played by great virtuosi. Their purpose was to help contributing the spread of music culture through cinema and to foster their correlation. Here follows an advertising text by “CGAI”: “while the greatest singers or violin, cello, keyboard virtuosi will play, the camera will carefully observe their performances, by getting closer to their hands, their gestures and poses… Sometimes, in correspondance with the backround music, the poetic, dramatic and fantastic visions suggested by the music sheets will be materialized. These ‘experiences’ will be called Cinéphonies”. Before the project failing after less than a year, Marecel L’Herbier had the time to make Debussy’s Children’s Corner with Alfred Cortot playing the piano (…). Critics all agree on recognizing that, within the project, Ophuls had proposed the  “purest formula. […] Beyle mentions that many years later, the music critic Robert Aguetand, writing on the review Disques (n. 97, 1958) recalled those short films where the camera “was abandoned to the delirious movements of the dolly, through which the public had the impression of having penetrated the virtuoso artistic secrets”.

Michele Mancini, Max Ophuls, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1978