[a] His father, a Hungarian Jew, had settled in the French capital in the 1920s and narrowly escaped the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in 1942, fleeing to Normandy where he was later joined by his son.

[2][14][15] In 1972, Cimemt became a film critic on the France Inter radio programme Le Masque et la Plume, to which he contributed until a few weeks before his death.

[8] He was the author of reference works on the film directors John Boorman, Jane Campion, Elia Kazan, Stanley Kubrick, Joseph Losey, and Francesco Rosi, based on extensive interviews with his subjects.

"[22] Ciment regarded cinema as a synthesis of all the arts, stating that he could not imagine being a film critic without a knowledge of theatre, literature, painting, and music.

[5] In 2012, Ciment participated in Sight & Sound magazine's critics' poll of the greatest films of all time, when he listed his ten favorite movies as: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Earrings of Madame de..., Fellini's Casanova, Persona, Providence, The Rules of the Game, Salvatore Giuliano, Sansho the Bailiff, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, and Trouble in Paradise.