Bazin, Andre

He studied at Ecol normal in Saint-Cloud , in 1941 interrupted his studies, during the occupation he founded a film club in Paris , in 1943 he began to write about cinema. After the war, he actively participated in the development of public education, creating a network of film clubs at the plants of Germany, Algeria , Morocco . Constantly wrote about cinema in newspapers and magazines, founded the journal Radio Cinema Television (now Telerama), and attracted the young Francois Truffaut to participate in it.

In 1951, together with a circle of associates, he founded the magazine Les Cahiers du cinéma , which provided the theoretical basis for the New Wave movement and became a kind of blacksmith for new French cinema. Propaganda of Italian neorealism , films by Charlie Chaplin , Orson Welles , Stroheim , Fritz Lang , Dreyer , Bunuel , Hitchcock , Marcel Carne , Jacques Becker , Jean Renoir , Akira Kurosawa , largely laying the foundation for the future movie aesthetics of Truffaut; Eric Romer , Claude Chabrol , Jacques Rivett and others. He died of leukemia a year before the publication of the first Truffaut film and did not see firsthand the triumph of his ideas and students.

It is mistakenly believed that the work of Bazin was collected in four parts of the book “What is a movie?” Only after his death ^[1] . The four-part structure of the book, as well as the structure of the first two volumes, were determined by Bazin himself, which he points out in the preface to the first volume, “Ontology and Language”:

“This is the first book in a series of at least four volumes, combining articles published after the war. <...> ... the author, as far as possible, chose articles that were least directly determined by topical journalism. It follows that the tone and, mainly, the size of the articles here combined will vary significantly; the criterion that we were guided by is the priority of content over form, therefore this or that two-three-page article that appeared in the weekly in the text of this book is no less valuable than studying an entire magazine or may even become a cornerstone for the building we are building, which is necessary for reliability of the facade. <...> Every time when it seemed to us appropriate, we were in no way embarrassed by them [articles - Note. translator] correct - both the form and the content. <...> ... instead of forcibly embedding our current thoughts in existing articles so as not to disrupt the natural flow of thoughts. " “The second volume of the book“ What is cinema? ”Will be aimed at deepening the understanding of the film’s relationship with related arts: romance, theater and painting. The theme of the third volume is the relationship of cinema with society. And finally, the fourth volume will be devoted to the unique tendency of modern cinema - neorealism ” ^[2] .

Additional details related to Bazin’s latest work are revealed by his friend and associate, and in the last few years of Bazin’s life and Cahiers du cinéma co-editor, Eric Romer :

“This book was to become the central portico of the future work of Andre Bazin, the work of not a journalist, albeit an exemplary, but a real writer. <...> ... when I read the first volume and the galleys of the second, confidence is born in me: this is not a set of sketches, sketches. Although this building is not crowned with a ridge, it stands on a solid foundation, in place of not only a skeleton, but also partitions, and some of them no longer need improvement. This moment is very important. <...> Despite the appearance, we are not dealing with a compilation. Of course, a selection was made, but the whole looks as if individual selected articles, most often not edited, were written in view of this selection. Nothing here bears the traces of the accidents of journalistic craft, which Bazin nevertheless practiced with all the known ardor and a sense of timeliness. These texts, generated by specific circumstances, were at the same time part of a methodically developing plan that now appeared before us. And there is no doubt that we are really talking about a priori drawn up plan, and not about the subsequent arrangement ” ^[3] .

• Orson Welles (1950, co-authored with Jean Cocteau ).
• Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? (4 volumes, 1958-1962). download the whole book
• Jean Renoir (1971).
• Le Cinéma de la cruauté. Erich von Stroheim - Carl Theodor Dreyer - Preston Sturges - Louis Bunuel - Alfred Hitchcock - Akira Kurosawa (1975).
• Le Cinéma de l'Occupation et de la Résistance (1975).
• Le Cinéma français de la Libération à la Nouvelle Vague (1983).
• La Politique des auteurs (1984).

• Bazin A. What is a movie? [: Sat articles]. - M .: Art , 1972. - 382 p.
• Bazin A. “Mr. Ripua” with or without Nemesis [Text] / A. Bazen; per. with fr. I. Epstein // Cinema notes. - 1997. - No 35. - 202-211.
• Bazin A. “Diary of a rural priest” and the style of Robert Bresson [Text] / A. Bazen; per. with fr. I. Epstein // Cinema notes. - 1993. - No 17. - S.80-93.
• Bazin A. Jean Renoir / Preface. Jean Renoir . Enter Francois Truffaut . - M .: Museum of Cinema , 1995 . - 191 p.: Ill. - ISBN 5-88395-012-4 : 15
• Bazin A. Myth of Stalin in Soviet cinema [Text] / A. Bazen; per. with fr. N. Nusinova // Film Studies Notes No. 1, 1988 .-- P.154-169.
• Bazin A. "The Secret of Picasso": A film in the spirit of Bergson / Per. I.G. Epstein // Session . 2008. - No. 33/34.
• Bazin A. On the policy of authors / Per. V. Lazarev. // Cineticle. Internet magazine about author's cinema.

Truffaut’s masterpiece “ Four hundred strokes ” is dedicated to the memory of Bazin, who died the day after the film was put into production. Bazin’s works on auteur cinema (developed by Francois Truffaut's theory of the author) are placed next to the works of Eisenstein and Krakauer . They are translated into many languages ​​and entered the cinema training systems in all countries of the world.

• Schmige H. Eisenstein, Bazin, Kracauer. Zur Theorie der Filmmontage. - Hamburg: Medienladen, 1977.
• Dudley A. André Bazin. - N. Y .: Oxford UP, 1978.
• Ungaro J. André Bazin: généalogies d'une théorie. - P .: Harmattan, 2000.
• Aronson O. Cinematic Event. On the theory of deep mise en scene Andre Bazin // He. Metakino. - M .: Ad Marginem , 2003 .-- S. 13-26.
• Vdovina I. S. Philosophical foundations of film criticism of A. Bazin [Text] / I. S. Vdovina // Vdovina I. S. Aesthetics of French personalism. - M .: Art, 1981. - S.147-171.
• Matthews P. Plunging into reality: Andre Bazin yesterday and today [Text] / P.Metius; per. from English S. Ishevskaya // Cinema notes. - 2001 .-- No55. - S.142-148.
• Sokolov V. S. Is Bazin anti-montage? [Text] / V. S. Sokolov // Cinema notes. - 1993/94. - No20. - S. 154-161.
• Stein S. Methodological notes on the study of aspects of cinema ontology in the concept of Andre Bazin [Text] / S. Stein // VGIK Bulletin. - 2010. - No. 5. - P.64-71.
• Stein S. Methodology of researching the concept of Andre Bazin in the framework of the disciplinary matrix of systemic cinema knowledge [Text] / S. Stein // Manager. Cinema. - 2010. - No. 12. - P.42-51.
• Stein S. Yu. Cinema ontology in the concept of Andre Bazin: diss. ... Candidate of Art: 17.00.03: defended 04/20/2011 [Place of protection: All-Russian. state University of Cinema S. A. Gerasimov]: approved. 02/09/2012 [Text] / S. Yu. Stein. - M., 2011.

• http://www.answers.com/topic/andr-bazin-2 (English)
• Official site of the magazine Les Cahiers du cinéma (fr.)
• Philosophy of the film by Bazin
• About the Bazin Film Theory, Part 1
• About the Bazin Film Theory, Part 2
• Articles about Andre Bazin on the website of the magazine "Session" (Russian)