Andre Bazin
André Bazin (April 18, 1918 - November 11, 1958) was a famous and influential French film critic and film theorist.
Biography
Bazin was born in Angers, France. He started to write on film in 1943 and was co-founder of the Cahiers du cinéma in 1951. As a spiritual father of the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) he was also a personal friend to Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Robert Bresson, Luis Buñuel, Marcel Carné, Jean Cocteau, Henri Langlois, Luchino Visconti and Jean Renoir. He died in Nogent-sur-Marne, Île-de-France.
Bazin practically invented film studies – two of his translated collections of criticism are mainstays of film courses; What is Cinema, volumes 1 & 2. He wanted the film picture to be treated respectfully and believed in the unveiling potential of film: the possibility to depict reality. Bazin is known as a proponent of "appreciative criticism," wherein only critics who like a film can write a review of it, thus encouraging constructive criticism.
Bibliography
In English:
- What Is Cinema?, by André Bazin (1967)
- Orson Welles, by André Bazin (1979)
- French Cinema of the Occupation and Resistance: The Birth of a Critical Esthetic, by André Bazin (1982)
- The Cinema of Cruelty: From Bunuel to Hitchcock, by André Bazin (1982)
- Essays on Chaplin, by André Bazin (1985)
- Jean Renoir, by André Bazin (1992)
- Bazin at Work: Major Essays & Reviews from the Forties and Fifties, by André Bazin, Bert Cardullo (ed.) (1996)
- French Cinema from the Liberation to the New Wave, 1945-1958, by André Bazin, Bert Cardullo (ed.) (2004)
Online texts
