André Bazin

André Bazin(French:[bazɛ̃]; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential Frenchfilm criticandfilm theorist. He started to write about movies in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renownedfilm magazineCahiers du cinémain 1951 alongsideJacques Doniol-ValcrozeandJoseph-Marie Lo Duca.
He is notable for arguing thatrealismis the most important function of cinema.His call for objective reality in film, as understood through the use ofdeep focusas well as the lack ofmontage,were linked to his belief that the interpretation of an entire movie or a specific scene should be left to the spectator. This placed him in opposition to prior film theorists, such as many writing during the 1920s and 1930s, who had emphasized how the cinema could manipulate reality. Bazin insisted that movies morally should serve as personalized projects by theirdirectorsto the degree that each and every one represents a director's individual vision, which reflected his broaderpsychologicalandphilosophicalbeliefs about culture and the arts.
Although his death in his forties, occurring in the middle of his writingcareer, kept him from witnessing the seminal works in theFrench New Waveperiod firsthand, Bazin's viewpoints exercised a large influence on those filmmakers. For instance,François Truffautdedicated the movieThe 400 Blows, a work released in May 1959 that has beenone of the films regarded as the greatest ever made in European history, to Bazin.
André Bazin was born inAngers, France on 18 April 1918. After graduating from theÉcole normale supérieureatSaint-Cloudin 1941, he pursued a career as a teacher, but was denied a teaching post due to his stammer. He then took part in the student organisationMaison des Lettresin Paris, where he founded a ciné-club during theGerman occupation of Paris.Bazin met future film and television producerJanine Kirschwhile working at Labour and Culture, a militant organization associated with theFrench Communist Partyduring the war. They married in 1949 and had a son named Florent.Bazin was diagnosed with leukemia in 1954. He died atNogent-sur-Marneon 11 November 1958, at the age of 40.
Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazineCahiers du cinémain 1951, along withJacques Doniol-ValcrozeandJoseph-Marie Lo Duca. Bazin was a major force in post-World War II film studies and criticism.  He editedCahiersuntil his death, and a four-volume collection of his writings was published posthumously, covering the years 1958 to 1962 and titledQu'est-ce que le cinéma?(What is cinema?).
A selection fromWhat 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.A new collection of Bazin's essays were released in 2022 under the titleAndré Bazin on Adaptation: Cinema's Literary Imagination.
The long-held view of Bazin's critical systemis that he argued for films that depicted "objective reality" (such as documentariesand films of theItalian neorealismschool or as he called it "the Italian school of the Liberation"). He advocated the use ofdeep focus(Orson Welles,William Wyler),wide shots (Jean Renoir) and the "shot-in-depth", and preferred what he referred to as "true continuity" throughmise-en-scèneover experiments in editing and visual effects. For example, he extensively analyzes a scene in Wyler'sThe Best Years of Our Lives(with cinematography byGregg Toland) to illuminate the function of deep-focus composition:
The concentration on objective reality, deep focus, and lack ofmontageare 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 toDudley Andrew,Roman CatholicismandPersonalismare two strong influences on Bazin's outlook of cinema.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 withmetaphysicalrealism than withcorporeality(also called realism by certain scholars).
Another academic, Tom Gunning, identifies yet a third influence on André Bazin:Hegelianism. According to Gunning, Bazin's preference for thelong takeis akin to Hegel's understanding of the unfolding of history in time.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.
At any rate, Bazin'spersonalismled him to believe that a film should represent a director's personal vision. This idea had a pivotal importance in the development of theauteur theory, the manifesto for which François Truffaut's article "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema" was published by his mentor Bazin inCahiersin 1954. Bazin also championed directors likeHoward Hawks,William WylerandJohn Ford.
Jean Renoirfamously wrote, looking back in retrospect, that he viewed Bazin as the one who "gave the patent or royalty to the cinema just as the poets of the past had crowned their kings".