André Bazin

André Bazin ( born April 18, 1918 in Angers, department of Maine -et -Loire, † November 11, 1958 in Nogent -sur -Marne département of Val- de -Marne ) is the preeminent French film critics after the Second World War and the spiritual father of Nouvelle Vague.

Life

After a teaching degree Bazin worked since 1943 as a film critic and in the French film club movement.

Bazin was life very sickly and suffered from tuberculosis, which forced him to repeatedly kürzerzutreten. He eventually died in 1958 from leukemia.

Reception

Bazin established with his texts, film criticism in France as intellectually stagnant profession. In 1951 he founded, together with Jacques Doniol - Valcroze the magazine Les Cahiers du cinéma in the published among others, François Truffaut, Jean -Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Luc Moullet, Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol.

His most important texts were in the four anthologies Qu'est- ce que le cinéma? published. In addition, numerous other published collections of text Bazin, including Charlie Chaplin. Bazin is also the author of monographs on Orson Welles, and Jean Renoir. The latter remained unfinished and was completed under the direction of Truffaut various Cahiers critics and published after his death.

Bazin laid the foundation for the later ethical and semiotic theory.

Bazin's major work, What is Film? , Points out that for Bazin questions are more important than answers. His film theory is not a coherent movement, but a collection of essays, in which he constantly re-evaluated and revised his theory critically. Bazin argues, as a former student of phenomenology coming from realism, with its emphasis probably better " functionalism " and not realism should be called. Because movies could not because of what they are, their importance, but because of what they do. Film for him is just not synonymous with reality as Siegfried Kracauer saw this yet.

In other words, the psychology becomes a crucial factor in addition to, if not the aesthetics. Because if the development of film art so intimately with psychology, then this is also true for the effect of a film.

This tendency finds in Italian neorealism, the Bazin was close to, its peak: The technique occurs in favor of an ethical and political - back effect, so that Bazin could ask - ultimately psychological: " Is not the neo- realism is primarily a humanism and only then a directing style? "

For the film- theoretical development, this means the following: The formalists Vsevolod Pudovkin under, Sergei Eisenstein and Béla Balázs saw the installation as the centerpiece of realistic filmmaking; Bazin, however, the mise- en- scène as much in the center. Mise -en- scène including for him in the first place depth of field and plan sequences, and therefore technical possibilities to let the audience participate in the intense action than would be possible in reality. The spectator, because closer to the action, is thus forced to create his image of the world anew from his attention - so to interpret it. Went the formalists in their theory still assumes that a body set up in the assembly sequence is unique so Bazin is due to the possibility of interpreting the viewer the sense of the ambiguity of reality back.

So Bazin introduces the subjective view as essential for screening and evaluation of films in film theory; movie aesthetically it's off now always about identification.

Works (selection)

• ( with Jean Cocteau ), Orson Welles, Paris 1950 - paperback edition: Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma ( Petite Bibliotheque ), 2003
• Qu'est- ce que le cinéma? - Four-volume self- made ​​by Bazin selection of his writings on cinema:

• Jean Renoir, Paris: Éditions champs libre, 1971, new edition 1989
• Le Cinéma de la cruauté. Erich von Stroheim - Carl Theodor Dreyer - Preston Sturges - Luis Buñuel - Alfred Hitchcock - Akira Kurosawa, Paris: Flammarion, 1975
• Le Cinéma et de l' Occupation de la Résistance, Paris: Union Générale d' éditions, 1975
• Le cinéma français de la Libération à la Nouvelle Vague, Paris: éditions de l' Étoile, 1983

A selection from the four-volume Qu'est- ce que le cinéma? appeared in 1975 under the misleading title Qu'est- ce que le cinéma? Edition définitive. The following German editions are based on this part of output.

• André Bazin, What is Cinema? : Building blocks for theory of film, Cologne: Dumont, 1975 - Selections from the "Edition définitive "
• André Bazin, Robert Fischer ( ed.), What is Film, Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 2004 - contains all the "Edition définitive " contained texts.

Other texts from Qu'est- ce que le cinéma? (not included in What is film? ) in German:

• " William Wyler ou le de la mise en scène jansenisme " dt " William Wyler, or the Jansenist of production", in: André Bazin, film reviews as film history, Munich: Hanser, 1978
• "Le cas Pagnol " dt "The case Pagnol " in: André Bazin, film reviews as film history, Munich: Hanser, 1978
• "Le mythe de M. Verdoux ", dt, " The Myth of Monsieur Verdoux " in film criticism, # 296 (May 1979) - important essay on Charlie Chaplin's late work

Numerous texts Bazin's are even 50 years after his death not before in German.