Serge Daney is widely recognized in his homeland as the most important French film critic after André Bazin. In a career devoted to criticism for Cahiers du cinéma and later Libération (where his remit widened to include other forms of journalism), including a key period as editor during the transition from the journal's French Communist Party and then Maoist phase beginning in 1973, Daney also held a lecturing position for a spell at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle. He was a significant public intellectual and featured in several documentaries, including Claire Denis' film Jacques Rivette – Le veilleur (Jacques Rivette – the night watchman; 1990). From 1985 to 1990 Daney presented a programme on cinema on the radio station France Culture. Following the publication of a book on Haitian politics in 1973 under the assumed name Raymond Sapène, Daney's journalism was collected in several volumes. He left Libération in 1981 to establish Trafic, a journal that, since his death from Aids in 1992, has continued his legacy. The only book-length English translation of Daney's writings to date – Postcards from the Cinema (2007) – is of the posthumously published Persévérances.

Ma page, c'était comme un film [My page was like a film].

The importance of Serge Daney's book lies in the fact that it is one of the few to take up the question of cinema–thought relations, which were so common at the beginning of reflection …, but later abandoned because of disenchantment.