What Is Cinema? (Volume II) - Softcover

Andre Bazin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520022556 ISBN 13: 9780520022553

Publisher: University of California Press, 1971

Synopsis

The philosophy and unique insights of the late French film critic are revealed in these essays.

About this title

Review

André Bazin is a great film critic and essayist, arguably the best France ever produced. His impact on the international cinema was monumental and continues to be felt today. He popularized the auteur theory, the idea that directors were the authors of their films. He was one of the first to take American "B"" movie genres, such as Westerns and films noir, seriously. He waxed eloquently on the Italian neorealist movement of the late '40s and '50s and inspired the "New Wave" of French directors, many of whom wrote for the journal he founded and edited, the legendary Cahiers du Cinema. François Truffaut dedicated The 400 Blows to him.

Bazin had a keen eye for cinematic detail and technique, but was also one of the cinema's great sociologists, psychologists, and historians. Volume two of What Is Cinema? collects some of his most characteristic writings. It contains essays on the aesthetic of neorealism; individual neorealist films by Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and Federico Fellini; the brilliance of Charlie Chaplin; and the mythmaking qualities of the Western. The volume ends with an appreciation of the great Jean Gabin and three essays on sex in the movies, including the delightful "Entomology of the Pin-Up Girl." Bazin's essays are short, smoothly written, revelatory, and filled with remarkable insights and a profound love for his subject.

From the Inside Flap

"Although André Bazin died shortly before the onset of what we now regard as the modern cinema, our understanding of this cinema wouldn't be the same without him. He's also one of the most scrupulous humanists and polemicists we've had, on a par with George Orwell, and these essays map out the busy highways we're all still navigating."―Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic for the Chicago Reader

"What Is Cinema? remains an invaluable―and beautiful―landmark in film and media studies. In both my research and my classrooms I return to these essays again and again―not only for the richness of their arguments but also for their passionate belief that the cinema is a form of revelation vital to our lives."―Vivian Sobchack, Professor, Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, University of California, Los Angeles

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1971
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520022556
• ISBN 13: 9780520022553
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224