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André Bazin

February 15, 2024

André Bazin (French: [bazɛ̃]; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.

André Bazin
André Bazin on the cover of the third volume of the original edition of Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?
Born(1918-04-18)18 April 1918
Angers, Third French Republic
Died11 November 1958(1958-11-11) (aged 40)
Nogent-sur-Marne, France
Alma materÉcole Normale Supérieure de Saint-Cloud
Occupation(s)Film critic, film theorist

Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1951, with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca.

He is notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema.[1] His call for objective reality, deep focus, and lack of montage[2] are linked to his belief that the interpretation of a film or scene should be left to the spectator. This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s, which emphasized how the cinema could manipulate reality.

Life edit

Bazin was born in Angers, France in 1918. He met future film and television producer Janine Kirsch while working at Labour and Culture, a militant organization associated with the French Communist party during World War II and eventually they married in 1949 and had a son named Florent.[3] He died in 1958, age 40, of leukemia.[4]

Film criticism edit

Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1951, along with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. Bazin was a major force in post-World War II film studies and criticism. He edited Cahiers until his death, and a four-volume collection of his writings was published posthumously, covering the years 1958 to 1962 and titled Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? (What is cinema?).

A selection from What Is Cinema? was translated into English and published in two volumes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They became mainstays of film courses in the English-speaking world, but never were updated or revised. In 2009, the Canadian publisher Caboose, taking advantage of more favourable Canadian copyright laws, compiled fresh translations of some of the key essays from the collection in a single-volume edition. With annotations by translator Timothy Barnard, this became the only corrected and annotated edition of these writings in any language. In 2018, this volume was replaced by a more extensive collection of Bazin's texts translated by Barnard, André Bazin: Selected Writings 1943–1958.[5] A new collection of Bazin's essays were released in 2022 under the title André Bazin on Adaptation: Cinema's Literary Imagination.

 
For the Oscar winner The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), director William Wyler and cinematographer Gregg Toland used deep focus to keep a significant character visible in the far background of the frame.

The long-held view of Bazin's critical system[6] is that he argued for films that depicted "objective reality" (such as documentaries[7] and films of the Italian neorealism school or as he called it "the Italian school of the Liberation"[8]). He advocated the use of deep focus (Orson Welles, William Wyler),[9] wide shots (Jean Renoir) and the "shot-in-depth", and preferred what he referred to as "true continuity" through mise-en-scène over experiments in editing and visual effects. For example, he extensively analyzes a scene in Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (with cinematography by Gregg Toland) to illuminate the function of deep-focus composition:

The action in the foreground is secondary, although interesting and peculiar enough to require our keen attention since it occupies a privileged place and surface on the screen. Paradoxically, the true action, the one that constitutes at this precise moment a turning point in the story, develops almost clandestinely in a tiny rectangle at the back of the room—in the left corner of the screen.... Thus the viewer is induced actively to participate in the drama planned by the director.[10]

The concentration on objective reality, deep focus, and lack of montage are linked to Bazin's belief that the interpretation of a film or scene should be left to the spectator. This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s, which emphasized how the cinema could manipulate reality.

According to Dudley Andrew, Roman Catholicism and Personalism are two strong influences on Bazin's outlook of cinema.[11] Victor Bruno says that these influences—especially Roman Catholicism—are the wellspring from which flows the essence of Bazin's understanding of "realism," which, according to him, is more closely linked with metaphysical realism than with corporeality (also called realism by certain scholars).[12]

Another academic, Tom Gunning, identifies yet a third influence on André Bazin: Hegelianism. According to Gunning, Bazin's preference for the long take is akin to Hegel's understanding of the unfolding of history in time.[13] This idea has been dismissed by certain authors, since Bazin privileged the long take as a means of liberty and Hegel understood that the unfolding of history would conclude in a perfectly systematized paradigm.[12]

At any rate, Bazin's personalism[14] led him to believe that a film should represent a director's personal vision. This idea had a pivotal importance in the development of the auteur theory, the manifesto for which François Truffaut's article "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema" was published by his mentor Bazin in Cahiers in 1954. Bazin also championed directors like Howard Hawks, William Wyler and John Ford.

In popular culture edit

Bibliography edit

In English edit

  • Bazin, André. (2018). André Bazin: Selected Writings 1943–1958 (Timothy Barnard, Trans.) Montreal: caboose, ISBN 978-1-927852-05-7
  • Bazin, André. (1967–1971). What is cinema? Vol. 1 & 2 (Hugh Gray, Trans., Ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02034-0
  • Bazin, André. (1973). Jean Renoir (François Truffaut, Ed.; W.W. Halsey II & William H. Simon, Trans.). New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-21464-0
  • Bazin, André. (1978). Orson Welles: a critical view. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0-06-010274-8
  • Andrew, Dudley. André Bazin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN 0-19-502165-7
  • Bazin, André. (1981). French cinema of the occupation and resistance: The birth of a critical esthetic (François Truffaut, Ed., Stanley Hochman, Trans.). New York: F. Ungar Pub. Co. ISBN 0-8044-2022-X
  • Bazin, André. (1982). The cinema of cruelty: From Buñuel to Hitchcock (François Truffaut, Ed.; Sabine d'Estrée, Trans.). New York: Seaver Books. ISBN 0-394-51808-X
  • Bazin, André. (1985). Essays on Chaplin (Jean Bodon, Trans., Ed.). New Haven, Conn.: University of New Haven Press. LCCN 84-52687
  • Bazin, André. (1996). Bazin at work: Major essays & reviews from the forties and fifties (Bert Cardullo, Ed., Trans.; Alain Piette, Trans.). New York: Routledge. (HB) ISBN 0-415-90017-4 (PB) ISBN 0-415-90018-2
  • Bazin, André. (2005). French cinema from the liberation to the New Wave, 1945–1958 (Bert Cardullo, Ed.) Peter Lang Pub Inc. ISBN 978-0820448756. UNO Press, University of New Orleans Press, [New Orleans, La.], ©2012, ISBN 9781608010844

In French edit

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, Part II.
  2. ^ "Divining the real: the leaps of faith in André Bazin's film criticism | Sight & Sound". British Film Institute. 18 April 2018.
  3. ^ "Obituary: Janine Bazin". The Guardian. June 17, 2003.
  4. ^ . Focus Features. Archived from the original on 18 January 2015. Retrieved 18 January 2015.
  5. ^ "André Bazin: Selected Writings 1943–1958". Caboosebooks.net. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
  6. ^ Blakeney, Katherine (September 4, 2009). "An Analysis of Film Critic Andre Bazin's Views on Expressionism and Realism in Film". Inquiries Journal. 1 (12) – via www.inquiriesjournal.com.
  7. ^ "André Bazin". obo.
  8. ^ "Review: What is Cinema? by André Bazin". Film Quarterly. 64 (3): 77–78. March 1, 2011. doi:10.1525/FQ.2011.64.3.77 – via online.ucpress.edu.
  9. ^ "Bazin Andre What Is Cinema Volume 1". p. 33 – via Internet Archive.
  10. ^ Bazin, André (1997). "William Wyler, or the Jansenist of Directing". In Cardullo, Bert (ed.). Bazin at Work: Major Essays & Reviews from the Forties & Fifties. New York: Routledge. pp. 14–15. ISBN 978-0-415-90018-8.
  11. ^ Andrew, Dudley (2013). André Bazin (new ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199836956.
  12. ^ a b Bruno, Victor (2021). "Archaism and Hegel in the Supply Reel: A Philosophical Look at André Bazin's Realism". In Media Res. 10 (18): 2941–2954. doi:10.46640/imr.10.18.11. S2CID 236329758.
  13. ^ Gunning, Tom (2011). "The World in Its Own Image". In Andrew, Dudley; Joubert-Laurencin, Hervé (eds.). Opening Bazin: Postwar Film Theory and Its Afterlife. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 124. ISBN 9780199733897.
  14. ^ Greydanus, Steven D. "Citizen Kane, André Bazin and the "Holy Moment" | Decent Films – SDG Reviews". Decent Films.
  15. ^ . BFI. Archived from the original on October 9, 2016.
  16. ^ "Cosmic Babble: Waking Life | Richard Linklater". Film Comment.

Further reading edit

  • The André Bazin Special Issue, Film International, No. 30 (November 2007), Jeffrey Crouse, guest editor. Essays include those by Charles Warren ("What is Criticism?"), Richard Armstrong ("The Best Years of Our Lives: Planes of Innocence and Experience"), William Rothman ("Bazin as a Cavellian Realist"), Mats Rohdin ("Cinema as an Art of Potential Metaphors: The Rehabilitation of Metaphor in André Bazin's Realist Film Theory"), Karla Oeler ("André Bazin and the Preservation of Loss"), Tom Paulus ("The View across the Courtyard: Bazin and the Evolution of Depth Style"), and Diane Stevenson ("Godard and Bazin"). Introductory essay, "Because We Need Him Now: Re-enchanting Film Studies Through Bazin," written by Jeffrey Crouse.

External links edit

  • Archaism and Hegel in the Supply Reel – A Philosophical Look at André Bazin's Realism (article on In Media Res)
  • André Bazin: Part 1, Film Style Theory in its Historical Context
  • André Bazin: Part 2, Style as a Philosophical Idea
  • André Bazin at IMDb

Online essays edit

  • What Is Cinema Vol. 1 and 2 on Internet Archive
  • "The Life and Death of Superimposition" (1946)
  • "Will CinemaScope Save the Film Industry?" (1953)
Media offices
Preceded by
 Editor of Cahiers du cinéma
1951–1958 		Succeeded by

February 15, 2024
andré, bazin, french, bazɛ, april, 1918, november, 1958, renowned, influential, french, film, critic, film, theorist, cover, third, volume, original, edition, cinéma, born, 1918, april, 1918angers, third, french, republicdied11, november, 1958, 1958, aged, nog. Andre Bazin French bazɛ 18 April 1918 11 November 1958 was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist Andre BazinAndre Bazin on the cover of the third volume of the original edition of Qu est ce que le cinema Born 1918 04 18 18 April 1918Angers Third French RepublicDied11 November 1958 1958 11 11 aged 40 Nogent sur Marne FranceAlma materEcole Normale Superieure de Saint CloudOccupation s Film critic film theoristBazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du cinema in 1951 with Jacques Doniol Valcroze and Joseph Marie Lo Duca He is notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema 1 His call for objective reality deep focus and lack of montage 2 are linked to his belief that the interpretation of a film or scene should be left to the spectator This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s which emphasized how the cinema could manipulate reality Contents 1 Life 2 Film criticism 3 In popular culture 4 Bibliography 4 1 In English 4 2 In French 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links 8 1 Online essaysLife editBazin was born in Angers France in 1918 He met future film and television producer Janine Kirsch while working at Labour and Culture a militant organization associated with the French Communist party during World War II and eventually they married in 1949 and had a son named Florent 3 He died in 1958 age 40 of leukemia 4 Film criticism editBazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du cinema in 1951 along with Jacques Doniol Valcroze and Joseph Marie Lo Duca Bazin was a major force in post World War II film studies and criticism He edited Cahiers until his death and a four volume collection of his writings was published posthumously covering the years 1958 to 1962 and titled Qu est ce que le cinema What is cinema A selection from What Is Cinema was translated into English and published in two volumes in the late 1960s and early 1970s They became mainstays of film courses in the English speaking world but never were updated or revised In 2009 the Canadian publisher Caboose taking advantage of more favourable Canadian copyright laws compiled fresh translations of some of the key essays from the collection in a single volume edition With annotations by translator Timothy Barnard this became the only corrected and annotated edition of these writings in any language In 2018 this volume was replaced by a more extensive collection of Bazin s texts translated by Barnard Andre Bazin Selected Writings 1943 1958 5 A new collection of Bazin s essays were released in 2022 under the title Andre Bazin on Adaptation Cinema s Literary Imagination nbsp For the Oscar winner The Best Years of Our Lives 1946 director William Wyler and cinematographer Gregg Toland used deep focus to keep a significant character visible in the far background of the frame The long held view of Bazin s critical system 6 is that he argued for films that depicted objective reality such as documentaries 7 and films of the Italian neorealism school or as he called it the Italian school of the Liberation 8 He advocated the use of deep focus Orson Welles William Wyler 9 wide shots Jean Renoir and the shot in depth and preferred what he referred to as true continuity through mise en scene over experiments in editing and visual effects For example he extensively analyzes a scene in Wyler s The Best Years of Our Lives with cinematography by Gregg Toland to illuminate the function of deep focus composition The action in the foreground is secondary although interesting and peculiar enough to require our keen attention since it occupies a privileged place and surface on the screen Paradoxically the true action the one that constitutes at this precise moment a turning point in the story develops almost clandestinely in a tiny rectangle at the back of the room in the left corner of the screen Thus the viewer is induced actively to participate in the drama planned by the director 10 The concentration on objective reality deep focus and lack of montage are linked to Bazin s belief that the interpretation of a film or scene should be left to the spectator This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s which emphasized how the cinema could manipulate reality According to Dudley Andrew Roman Catholicism and Personalism are two strong influences on Bazin s outlook of cinema 11 Victor Bruno says that these influences especially Roman Catholicism are the wellspring from which flows the essence of Bazin s understanding of realism which according to him is more closely linked with metaphysical realism than with corporeality also called realism by certain scholars 12 Another academic Tom Gunning identifies yet a third influence on Andre Bazin Hegelianism According to Gunning Bazin s preference for the long take is akin to Hegel s understanding of the unfolding of history in time 13 This idea has been dismissed by certain authors since Bazin privileged the long take as a means of liberty and Hegel understood that the unfolding of history would conclude in a perfectly systematized paradigm 12 At any rate Bazin s personalism 14 led him to believe that a film should represent a director s personal vision This idea had a pivotal importance in the development of the auteur theory the manifesto for which Francois Truffaut s article A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema was published by his mentor Bazin in Cahiers in 1954 Bazin also championed directors like Howard Hawks William Wyler and John Ford In popular culture editFrancois Truffaut dedicated The 400 Blows to Bazin who died one day after shooting began on the film 15 Richard Linklater s film Waking Life features a discussion between filmmaker Caveh Zahedi and poet David Jewell regarding some of Bazin s film theories There is an emphasis on Bazin s Christianity and the belief that every shot is a representation of God manifested in creation 16 Bibliography editIn English edit Bazin Andre 2018 Andre Bazin Selected Writings 1943 1958 Timothy Barnard Trans Montreal caboose ISBN 978 1 927852 05 7 Bazin Andre 1967 1971 What is cinema Vol 1 amp 2 Hugh Gray Trans Ed Berkeley University of California Press ISBN 0 520 02034 0 Bazin Andre 1973 Jean Renoir Francois Truffaut Ed W W Halsey II amp William H Simon Trans New York Simon and Schuster ISBN 0 671 21464 0 Bazin Andre 1978 Orson Welles a critical view New York Harper and Row ISBN 0 06 010274 8 Andrew Dudley Andre Bazin New York Oxford University Press 1978 ISBN 0 19 502165 7 Bazin Andre 1981 French cinema of the occupation and resistance The birth of a critical esthetic Francois Truffaut Ed Stanley Hochman Trans New York F Ungar Pub Co ISBN 0 8044 2022 X Bazin Andre 1982 The cinema of cruelty From Bunuel to Hitchcock Francois Truffaut Ed Sabine d Estree Trans New York Seaver Books ISBN 0 394 51808 X Bazin Andre 1985 Essays on Chaplin Jean Bodon Trans Ed New Haven Conn University of New Haven Press LCCN 84 52687 Bazin Andre 1996 Bazin at work Major essays amp reviews from the forties and fifties Bert Cardullo Ed Trans Alain Piette Trans New York Routledge HB ISBN 0 415 90017 4 PB ISBN 0 415 90018 2 Bazin Andre 2005 French cinema from the liberation to the New Wave 1945 1958 Bert Cardullo Ed Peter Lang Pub Inc ISBN 978 0820448756 UNO Press University of New Orleans Press New Orleans La c 2012 ISBN 9781608010844In French edit La politique des auteurs edited by Andre Bazin Interviews with Robert Bresson Jean Renoir Luis Bunuel Howard Hawks Alfred Hitchcock Fritz Lang Orson Welles Michelangelo Antonioni Carl Theodor Dreyer and Roberto Rossellini Qu est ce que le cinema 4 vols by Andre Bazin originally published 1958 1962 1958 1959 1961 1962 New edition Les Editions du Cerf 2003 Andre Bazin Ecrits complets 2 vol editions Macula 2018See also editInvisible auditorReferences edit Dudley Andrew The Major Film Theories An Introduction Oxford New York Oxford University Press 1976 Part II Divining the real the leaps of faith in Andre Bazin s film criticism Sight amp Sound British Film Institute 18 April 2018 Obituary Janine Bazin The Guardian June 17 2003 Andre Bazin dies Focus Features Archived from the original on 18 January 2015 Retrieved 18 January 2015 Andre Bazin Selected Writings 1943 1958 Caboosebooks net Retrieved 18 April 2018 Blakeney Katherine September 4 2009 An Analysis of Film Critic Andre Bazin s Views on Expressionism and Realism in Film Inquiries Journal 1 12 via www inquiriesjournal com Andre Bazin obo Review What is Cinema by Andre Bazin Film Quarterly 64 3 77 78 March 1 2011 doi 10 1525 FQ 2011 64 3 77 via online ucpress edu Bazin Andre What Is Cinema Volume 1 p 33 via Internet Archive Bazin Andre 1997 William Wyler or the Jansenist of Directing In Cardullo Bert ed Bazin at Work Major Essays amp Reviews from the Forties amp Fifties New York Routledge pp 14 15 ISBN 978 0 415 90018 8 Andrew Dudley 2013 Andre Bazin new ed Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199836956 a b Bruno Victor 2021 Archaism and Hegel in the Supply Reel A Philosophical Look at Andre Bazin s Realism In Media Res 10 18 2941 2954 doi 10 46640 imr 10 18 11 S2CID 236329758 Gunning Tom 2011 The World in Its Own Image In Andrew Dudley Joubert Laurencin Herve eds Opening Bazin Postwar Film Theory and Its Afterlife Oxford Oxford University Press p 124 ISBN 9780199733897 Greydanus Steven D Citizen Kane Andre Bazin and the Holy Moment Decent Films SDG Reviews Decent Films Andre Bazin BFI Archived from the original on October 9 2016 Cosmic Babble Waking Life Richard Linklater Film Comment Further reading editThe Andre Bazin Special Issue Film International No 30 November 2007 Jeffrey Crouse guest editor Essays include those by Charles Warren What is Criticism Richard Armstrong The Best Years of Our Lives Planes of Innocence and Experience William Rothman Bazin as a Cavellian Realist Mats Rohdin Cinema as an Art of Potential Metaphors The Rehabilitation of Metaphor in Andre Bazin s Realist Film Theory Karla Oeler Andre Bazin and the Preservation of Loss Tom Paulus The View across the Courtyard Bazin and the Evolution of Depth Style and Diane Stevenson Godard and Bazin Introductory essay Because We Need Him Now Re enchanting Film Studies Through Bazin written by Jeffrey Crouse External links editArchaism and Hegel in the Supply Reel A Philosophical Look at Andre Bazin s Realism article on In Media Res Andre Bazin Divining the real page on BFI Andre Bazin Part 1 Film Style Theory in its Historical Context Andre Bazin Part 2 Style as a Philosophical Idea Andre Bazin at IMDbOnline essays edit What Is Cinema Vol 1 and 2 on Internet Archive The Life and Death of Superimposition 1946 Will CinemaScope Save the Film Industry 1953 Andre Bazin on Rene Clement and literary adaptation Two original reviewsMedia officesPreceded by Editor of Cahiers du cinema1951 1958 Succeeded byEric Rohmer Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Andre Bazin amp oldid 1191926840, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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