André Bazin
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
film critic
Film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
and film theorist
Film theory
Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large...
.
Life
Bazin was born in Angers, FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, in 1918. He died in 1958, age 40, due to leukemia.
Film criticism
Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the film magazine Cahiers du cinémaCahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
in 1951, along with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze was a French actor, critic, screenwriter, and director...
and Lo Duca
Lo Duca
Lo Duca is the surname of the following people:*Joseph-Marie Lo Duca , Italian writer*Paul Lo Duca , American baseball player...
. Bazin was a major force in post-World War II film studies and criticism. In addition to editing Cahiers until his death, a four-volume collection of his writings was published posthumously from 1958 to 1962 and titled Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? (What is Cinema?). A selection from this collection 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 were never 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.
The long-held standard and highly reductive view of Bazin's critical system, now being subjected to more sophisticated analysis by Bazin scholars worldwide, is that he argued for films that depicted what he saw as "objective reality" (such as documentaries and films of the Italian neorealism
Italian neorealism
Italian neorealism is a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class, filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actors...
school) and directors who made themselves "invisible" (such as Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
). He advocated the use of deep focus
Deep focus
Deep focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique using a large depth of field. Depth of field is the front-to-back range of focus in an image — that is, how much of it appears sharp and clear. Consequently, in deep focus the foreground, middle-ground and background are all in focus...
(Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
), wide shots (Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
) and the "shot-in-depth", and preferred what he referred to as "true continuity" through mise en scène
Mise en scène
Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction...
over experiments in editing and visual effects. This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s which emphasized how the cinema can manipulate reality. 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.
Bazin believed that a film should represent a director's personal vision, rooted in the spiritual beliefs known as personalism
Personalism
Personalism is a philosophical school of thought searching to describe the uniqueness of a human person in the world of nature, specifically in relation to animals...
. These ideas would have a pivotal importance on the development of the auteur theory
Auteur theory
In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur"...
, the manifesto for which was François Truffaut's 1954 Cahiers article "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema". Bazin also is known as a proponent of "appreciative criticism," wherein only critics who like a film can write a review of it, thus encouraging constructive criticism.
Bazin in popular culture
- François TruffautFrançois TruffautFrançois Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
dedicated The 400 BlowsThe 400 BlowsThe 400 Blows is a 1959 French film directed by François Truffaut. One of the defining films of the French New Wave, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. The story revolves around Antoine Doinel, an ordinary adolescent in Paris, who is thought by his parents and teachers...
to Bazin, who died one day after shooting commenced on the film. - Richard LinklaterRichard Linklater-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...
's film Waking LifeWaking LifeWaking Life is an American animated film , directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame.The film focuses on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and...
features a discussion between filmmaker Caveh ZahediCaveh ZahediCaveh Zahedi is an American film director and actor of Iranian descent.-Early years:Zahedi was born in Washington, D.C. to Iranian immigrant parents. He studied philosophy at Yale University...
and poet David JewellDavid Jewell (poet)David Jewell is an American Performance poet.-Career:A movie credit in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise with his poem Delusion Angel. An appearance as an animated cloud in Linklater's Waking Life....
regarding some of Bazin's film theories. There is an emphasis on Bazin's ChristianityChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
and the belief that every shot is a representation of GodGodGod is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
manifesting creation. - Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
's Contempt (Le Mépris)Contempt (film)Contempt is a 1963 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on the Italian novel Il disprezzo by Alberto Moravia. It stars Brigitte Bardot.-Plot:...
(1963) opens with a quotation wrongly attributed to Bazin (in fact the author of the quotation is French film critic and playwright Michel Mourlet from his article "Sur un art ignoré" in Cahiers du cinéma, no. 98). - David Foster WallaceDavid Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
's novel Infinite Jest references Bazin in regards to film and film criticism.
In English
- Bazin, André. (2009). What is Cinema? (Timothy Barnard, Trans.) Montreal: caboose, ISBN 9780981191409
- Bazin, André. (1967-71). What is cinema? Vol. 1 & 2 (Hugh Gray, Trans., Ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520020340
- Bazin, André. (1973). Jean Renoir (Francois Truffaut, Ed.; W.W. Halsey II & William H. Simon, Trans.). New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0671214640
- Bazin, André. (1978). Orson Welles: a critical view. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0060102748
- Andrew, Dudley. André Bazin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN 0195021657
- Bazin, André. (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 080442022X
- Bazin, André. (1982). The cinema of cruelty: From Buñuel to Hitchcock (Francois Truffaut, Ed.; Sabine d'Estrée, Trans.). New York: Seaver Books. ISBN 039451808X
- 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 0415900174 (PB) ISBN 0415900182
- Bazin, André. (Forthcoming). French cinema from the liberation to the New Wave, 1945-1958 (Bert Cardullo, Ed.)
In French
- La politique des auteurs, edited by André Bazin. Interviews with Robert BressonRobert Bresson-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
, Jean RenoirJean RenoirJean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
, Luis BuñuelLuis BuñuelLuis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
, Howard HawksHoward HawksHoward Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
, Alfred HitchcockAlfred HitchcockSir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, Fritz LangFritz LangFriedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
, Orson WellesOrson WellesGeorge Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, Michelangelo AntonioniMichelangelo AntonioniMichelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
, Carl Theodor DreyerCarl Theodor DreyerCarl Theodor Dreyer, Jr. was a Danish film director. He is regarded by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest directors in cinema.-Life:Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark...
and Roberto RosselliniRoberto RosselliniRoberto Rossellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.-Early life:Born in Rome, Roberto Rossellini lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had... - Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?, by André Bazin, originally published 1958-1962. New edition: Les Éditions du CERF, 2003.
External links
- André Bazin - Divining the real (page on BFI)
- André Bazin: Part 1, Film Style Theory in its Historical Context
- André Bazin: Part 2, Style as a Philosophical Idea
Online essays
- "The 400 Blows: Verisimilitude and the (Re)presentation of the City" (2008)
- "The Life and Death of Superimposition" (1946)
- "Will CinemaScope Save the Film Industry?" (1953)
- André Bazin on René Clement and literary adaptation: Two original reviews
- André Bazin on Claude Autant-Lara and literary adaptation: Four original reviews
See also
- 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.