Bazin at Work

by André Bazin

Bazin's impact on film art, as theorist and critic, is considered to be greater than that of any single director, actor, or producer. He is credited with almost single-handedly establishing the study of film as an accepted intellectual pursuit, as well as with being the spiritual father of the French New Wave. Bazin at Work is the first English collection of disparate Bazin writings since the appearance of the second volume of What Is Cinema? in 1971. It includes work from Cahiers le cinema (which he founded and which is the most influential single critical periodical in the history of the cinema) and Esprit . He addresses filmmakers including Rossellini, Eisenstein, Pagnol, and Capra and well-known films including La Strada , Citizen Kane , Scarface , and The Bridge on the River Kwai .

Genres: Film, Essays, Philosophy, Criticism, Nonfiction

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 17, 1997

About the author

Writings of French critic and film theorist André Bazin influenced the development of cinema of New Wave.

André Bazin founded the renowned and pioneering journal, Cahiers du cinéma.

Bazin saw and argued to depict "objective reality," such as documentaries of the Italian neo-realism school and "invisible" directors, such as Howard Winchester Hawks. He advocated the use of deep focus as George Orson Welles and wide shots as Jean Renoir "in depth," and he preferred "true continuity" through mise en scène over experiments in editing and visual effects. This preference placed him in opposition of the 1920s and 1930s to those who emphasized ability to manipulate reality. Theory of Bazin to leave the interpretation of a scene to the spectator linked the concentration on objective reality, deep focus, and lack of montage.

Bazin thought to represent a personal vision, rooted in the spiritual beliefs, known as personalism, of a director. A pivotal importance of these ideas on the auteur; François Truffaut in 1954 wrote the manifesto "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema," article in Cahiers. People also know Bazin as a proponent of encouraging only "appreciative," constructive reviewers.

After World War II, Bazin, a major force, studied. He edited Cahiers until his death, and people then published a posthumous four-volume collection, titled Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? ( What is Cinema? ), to 1962. In the late 1960s and 1970s, people translated two of these volumes, mainstays of courses in the United States and England.

In response to widespread dissatisfaction with existing English translations, Caboos, the publisher of Montréal, in 2009 brought out a translation of selected essays from What is Cinema?