Initially edited by Doniol-Valcroze and, after 1957, by Éric Rohmer (aka, Maurice Scherer), it included amongst its writers Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and François Truffaut,[1] who went on to become highly influential filmmakers.

[4] Much of its head staff, including Bazin, Doniol-Valcroze, Lo Duca, and the various younger, less-established critics, had met and shared their beliefs about film through their involvement in the publication of Revue du Cinéma from 1946 until its final issue in 1948; Cahiers was created as a successor to this earlier magazine.

[7][8] Bazin intended Cahiers to be a continuation of the intellectual form of criticism that Revue had printed, which prominently featured his articles advocating for realism as the most valuable quality of cinema.

As more issues of Cahiers were published, however, Bazin found that a group of young proteges and critics serving as editors underneath him were beginning to disagree with him in the pages of the magazine.

[6] The younger critics broke completely with Bazin by 1954, when an article in the January issue by Truffaut attacked what he called La qualité française (lit. '

A group of five Cahiers editors, including Godard and Doniol-Valcroze and led by Rivette, urged Rohmer to refocus the magazine's content on newer films such as their own.

It led to the rehabilitation of some of the old Cahiers favourites, as well as some new film makers like Manoel de Oliveira, Raoul Ruiz, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Youssef Chahine, and Maurice Pialat.

Recent writers have included Daney, André Téchiné, Léos Carax, Olivier Assayas, Danièle Dubroux, and Serge Le Péron.

In February 2009, Cahiers was acquired from Le Monde by Richard Schlagman, also owner of Phaidon Press, a worldwide publishing group which specialises in books on the visual arts.