Opening Bazin Postwar Film Theory and Its Afterlife

by Andrew, Dudley; Joubert-Laurencin, Herve

• ISBN13: 9780199733897
• ISBN10: 0199733899
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

André Bazin remains one of the most read, most studied, and most engaging figures ever to have written about film. Fifty years after his death, he is still widely recognized as cinema's most significant philosopher-critic. Always an important presence within cinema theory, Bazin has seen a massive resurgence of interest among critics, scholars, and students now that an electronic archive of his entire critical output has been catalogued. Opening Bazin assesses the great critic's influence and legacy, with essays from several generations of the very best film scholars: Gunning, Frodon, Margulies, Conley, MacCabe, Narboni, and Vernet, to name just a few. Ultimately, these essays reaffirm Bazin's relevance in this new century, tracing his lineage, debating his aesthetics, locating him in the rich cultural moment of postwar France, and tracking the effect of his thought around the world.

Author Biography

Dudley Andrew is R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University. He is the author of numerous publications, including What Cinema Is! and Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film. Herv Joubert-Laurencin is a leading authority in France on Bazin and the author of Pasolini: Portrait du pote en cinaste and La lettre volante: Quatre essais sur le cinma d'animation.

Table of Contents

A Binocular Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Lineage
A Bazinian Half-Century	p. 3
Cinema Across Fault Lines: Bazin and the French School of Geography	p. 13
Evolution and Event in Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?	p. 32
The Reality of Hallucination in André Bazin	p. 42
Beyond the Image in Benjamin and Bazin: The Aura of the Event	p. 57
Bazin as Modernist	p. 66
Film and Plaster: The Mold of History	p. 77
From Bazin to Deleuze: A Matter of Depth	p. 85
Deconstruction avant la lettre: Jacques Derrida Before André Bazin	p. 95
Aesthetics
Belief in Bazin	p. 107
The World in Its Own Image: The Myth of Total Cinema	p. 119
The Afterlife of Superimposition	p. 127
The Difference of Cinema in the System of the Arts	p. 142
Malraux, Bazin, and the Gesture of Picasso	p. 153
Incoherent Spasms and the Dignity of Signs: Bazins Bresson	p. 167
Animals: an Adventure in Bazins Ontology	p. 177
Bazin's Exquisite Corpses	p. 186
Rewriting the Image: Two Effects of the Future-Perfect in André Bazin	p. 200
Historical Moment
The Eloquent Image: The Postwar Mission of Film and Criticism	p. 215
Bazin in Combat	p. 225
Bazin the Censor?	p. 234
Waves of Crisis in French Cinema	p. 240
Bazins Chaplin Myth and the Corrosive Lettrists	p. 246
Radical Ambitions in Postwar French Documentary	p. 254
Bazin on the Margins of the Seventh Art	p. 262
Television and the Auteur in the Late '50s	p. 268
André Bazins Bad Taste	p. 275
Worldwide Influence
Montage Under Suspicion: Bazins Russo-Sovict Reception	p. 291
From Ripples to Waves: Bazin in Eastern Europe	p. 302
Bazin in Brazil: A Welcome Visitor	p. 308
Bazin and the Politics of Realism in Mainland China	p. 316
Japanese Readings: The Textual Thread	p. 324
Japanese Lessons: Bazins Cinematic Cosmopolitanism	p. 330
Notes on Contributors	p. 335
Index of Names	p. 339
Index of Films	p. 345
Index of Terms	p. 349
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