In a more sincere mode, I appreciate the tremendous contributions of Bordwell and Carroll to the dialogue on Film Theory, but to imagine, as Gilberto does that the days of Bazin's Catholicism in film criticism are returning is to imagine that the middle-ages are coming around again and that Fellini will rise from the grave. Don't hold your breath. Either film is a bourgeois, capitalist tool or it is art. But, this involves a distortion of the great majority of Postmodernist film writings of the 70's, 80's and 90's, which understood that film is quite capable of being both a bourgeois, capitalist tool and an art. In fact, one can charge postmodernists of naivet in thinking of it too much as an art.
Capitalists know it, as they know all things, as tools for making money.
If the capitalists credit film as art, it is only as a way of increasing profits. Film exists in this imaginary space, where art does prevail and in the other imaginary space called capitalism. But to know which dominates, ask yourself how many films Sergei Eisenstein got to make in Hollywood. Gilberto may be quite correct that film history courses are popular in colleges. That'll be the day.