To begin, a guessing game. The February 1967 issue of Cahiers du cinéma includes a “Dictionary of New French Cinema” comprising capsule commentaries on 157 directors. One of these offers the following superlative assessment: “She remains (now alongside Marguerite Duras) the greatest female auteur of our cinema.”

Naming the recipient of this praise shouldn’t be difficult, given the exceedingly few women active as directors in 1960s France. The New Wave was populated by rebellious sons casting off the cinéma de papa with oedipal gusto; it was a movement conjugated, to borrow Geneviève Sellier’s memorable formulation, in the “masculine singular.” So who could belong in the company of the grande dame Duras?…