Bazin, André

(1918-1958)

   Film critic and theorist. Best known as the cofounder of the film journal Les Cahiers du cinéma and as one of the motivating forces behind the Nouvelle Vague or New Wave, André Bazin was a film scholar in every sense of the word, and one who worked at every level to bring intelligent analysis and understanding of film to the average viewer. Bazin was, from an early age, a very gifted student with an analytical mind. Intending to become a teacher, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure. Bazin completed his studies in 1941 but was denied a teaching post, ostensibly because he stuttered. However, he was able to find an informal teaching position of sorts in a Maison de lettres, a facility set up during World War II to help educate those children who had been displaced or whose education had been otherwise disrupted.

   In 1942, during the Occupation, Bazin became interested in the cinema. He organized lectures and debates on film, and also founded the first of his famous ciné-clubs or film clubs, which would expose people like François Truffaut to cinema. It is clear from these efforts that one of Bazin's interests was the popularization of the study of film, not only through formal intellectual channels, but also through less formal, more open channels. So intent was Bazin on realizing this goal that he was willing to risk the ire of the Nazi occupying forces. His ciné-clubs, in particular, were organized in direct defiance of the Nazi régime. Bazin also began writing about film. His first forum was as film critic for the newspaper Le Parisien Libéré. Prior to founding Les Cahiers du cinéma in 1951, along with Jacques Doniel-Valcroze, Bazin wrote for numerous film journals, including L'Écran français and La Revue du cinema. One of his main contributions to film scholarship and criticism was his attention to what most scholars would now consider the fundamental elements of film composition, mise-en-scène, cinematography, and editing. He was one of the first scholars to move from simple narrative analysis to an analysis of the visual field, shot composition, camera angle, camera movement, staging, costume, lighting, etc. In fact, there are many in film studies today who would say, not without grounds, that Bazin founded film studies as we know it.

   Perhaps as a result of his very focused attempt to understand and explain how films meant not simply what they meant, Bazin was much more open than many of his contemporaries to the experimentation of avant-garde filmmakers. For Bazin, cinema was essentially an active engagement between spectator and film, and the degree to which a film called upon a spectator to engage with the work, that is to have to interpret the images on the screen, was in many ways the degree to which the film was a success. If he is remembered as an avid fan of realism, this in no way diminishes his openness to film's numerous other possibilities. Bazin died of leukemia at the very young age of forty. By that time, he had published something like two thousand writings on film. A collection of what was considered his most important work was published in a volume titled Qu'est-ce le cinema?/What is Cinema? It was first published in 1967, but has been reedited several times. The book remains a canonical text in film scholarship.

   Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins