- Home
- The André Bazin Reader
Preparing your PDF for download...
There was a problem with your download, please contact the server administrator.
The André Bazin Reader is the largest and most comprehensive edition of the work of André Bazin in English. It includes 40 articles from every full year of Bazin's career, a major introductory essay by film theorist Jacques Aumont, and extensive annotations by translator Timothy Barnard. No other English-language edition has brought together all the major texts the way the caboose volume has. The texts included here are also offered in their original version, as they were written and published in Bazin's day, before he or his posthumous editors revised and abridged them. Several have never before been translated. The volume includes brilliant essays on filmmakers of Bazin's day (Renoir, Welles, Hitchcock, Chaplin, Bresson, Malraux, Pagnol, Wyler); essays on film and literature, painting and theatre; on Japanese cinema and Italian neo-realism; documentary and science film; film genres (comedy, the western, children's films); film language and mise en scène; film history; television and new film technologies; exhibition and dubbing; and the 'politique des auteurs' and the role of the critic. Readers will also discover the essay "Découpage," which languished unread for nearly 60 years before the translator unearthed it. With the help of the translator's extensive critical glossaries, this volume restores Bazin's theory of découpage to his work and introduces it English-language film studies.
Table of Contents This Is Not a Theorist: Notes on André Bazin iii Jacques Aumont A Note on the Texts xlix Timothy Barnard 1943 For a Realist Aesthetic 3 1944 On Realism 5 1945 Ontology of the Photographic Image 9 Espoir: On Style in the Cinema 17 1946 The Myth of Total Cinema and 31 the Origins of the Cinématographe 1947 The Technique of Citizen Kane 41 The Science Film: Chance Beauty 49 1948 Cinematic Realism and the 53 Italian School of the Liberation William Wyler, the Jansenist of Mise en scène 83 Orson Welles' Contribution 109 Landru—Charlie—Monsieur Verdoux 117 Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest 153 1949 Beyond The Walls of Malapaga: 163 René Clément and Mise en scène Cinema and Painting 169 1950 Doublé or Not Doublé 179 1951 Depth of Field, Once and for All 183 Diary of a Country Priest and Robert Bresson's Stylistic System 190 Theatre and Film (1) 211 Theatre and Film (2) 231 Death Every Afternoon 261 1952 French Renoir 267 Découpage 287 For an Impure Cinema: In Defence of Adaptation 309 1953 The Real and the Imaginary 335 No Script for Monsieur Hulot 341 1954 Hitchcock versus Hitchcock 349 Letters from My Windmill and 363 the Case of Marcel Pagnol 1955 Symposium: New Film Technologies 369 Small Cause, Great Effects: Is the Continuous Show 373 the Reason for the Evolution of the American Crime Film? Japanese Cinema's Lesson in Style 377 A Little Late . . . 383 Cinema Revealed by Animal Films 389 Cinemascope Slaughter 393 1956 A Bergsonian Film: The Picasso Mystery 401 The Gold Rush 409 Assembly Prohibited 413 1957 On the 'Politique des auteurs' 421 A Week Devoted to the Western 439 The Western, Loved Scornfully, is 445 the Lyric Form of American Cinema 1958 The Perils of Perri 449 'The Soldier's Tale' or Theatre 'Squared' 455 Thoughts on Film Criticism 457 Glossary of Terms 469 1. General Terms 470 2. Découpage 472 3. Montage 493 4. Mise en scène 515 5. Technique 532 6. Fait 552 Acknowledgements 561 Name index 563 Title index 571
André Bazin (1918–1958) was France's foremost film critic. He is the most influential and widely-read critic in film history and, in the mid-1950s, was the spiritual godfather to the French "New Wave" filmmakers. Jacques Aumont is the leading French film theorist today. Among his nearly two dozen authored, edited or co-edited books are, in English, Montage Eisenstein, The Image, Aesthetics of Film and, for caboose, Montage. In 2019 his career was recognized by the prestigious Balzan Prize.
"This unique translation is a must-have for every film scholar working in English. For the first time, it brings together key essays by Bazin, many of which were previously unavailable in English. This collection is simply the best access to Bazin's work that currently exists in English. An introductory essay by major French film scholar Jacques Aumont adds to the excellent translations to make this volume an essential document for every serious film studies library."
~Martin Lefebvre, Concordia University Research Chair in Film Studies