What is Cinema  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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What is cinema? (original French Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?) is a collection of film essays by André Bazin, originally published 1958-1962.

From the publisher:

André Bazin's What Is Cinema? (volumes I and II) have been classics of film studies for as long as they've been available and are considered the gold standard in the field of film criticism. Although Bazin made no films, his name has been one of the most important in French cinema since World War II. He was co-founder of the influential Cahiers du Cinéma, which under his leadership became one of the world's most distinguished publications. Championing the films of Jean Renoir (who contributed a short foreword to Volume I), Orson Welles, and Roberto Rossellini, he became the protégé of François Truffaut, who honors him touchingly in his forword to Volume II. This new edition includes graceful forewords to each volume by Bazin scholar and biographer Dudley Andrew, who reconsiders Bazin and his place in contemporary film study. The essays themselves are erudite but always accessible, intellectual, and stimulating. As Renoir puts it, the essays of Bazin "will survive even if the cinema does not."

Volume I TOC

• Foreword to the 2004 Edition IX
• Introduction
• The Ontology of the Photographic Image 9
• The Myth of Total Cinema 17
• The Evolution of the Language of Cinema 23
• The Virtues and Limitations of Montage 41
• In Defense of Mixed Cinema 53
• Theater and Cinema 76
• Part One 76
• Part Two 95
• Le Journal d'un cure de campagne and the
• Stylistics of Robert Bresson 125
• Charlie Chaplin 144
• Cinema and Exploration 154
• Painting and Cinema 164

vNotes 173

• Index 179

Volume II TOC

• Foreword by Francois Truffaut v
• Translator's Introduction 1
• An Aesthetic of Reality : Cinematic realism and the Italian School of the Liberation
• La Terra Trema 41
• Bicycle Thief 47
• De Sica : Metteur en Scene 61
• Umberto D : A Great Work 79
• Cabiria : The Voyage to the End of Neorealism 83
• In Defense of Rossellini 93
• The Myth of Monsieur Verdoux 102
• Limelight, or the Death of Moliere 124
• The Grandeur of Limelight 128
• The Western, or the American Film par excellence 140
• The Evolution of the Western 149
• Entomology of the Pin-Up Girl 158
• The Outlaw 163
• Marginal Notes on Eroticism in the Cinema 169
• The Destiny of Jean Gabin 176
• Notes 179
• Index 195