André Bazin's Film Theory

Angela Dalle Vacche

Through metaphors and allusions to art, science, and religion, Andre Bazin's writings on the cinema explore a simple yet profound question: what is a human? For the famous French film critic, a human is simultaneously a rational animal and an irrational being. Bazin's idea of the cinema is a mind-machine where the ethical implications have priority over aesthetic issues. And in its ability to function as an art form for the masses, cinema is the only medium that can address an audience at the individual and community levels simultaneously- the audience sees the same film, but each individual relates to the narrative in a different way. In principle, cinema can unsettle our routines in productive ways and expand our sense of belonging to a much larger picture.0By arguing that this dissident Catholic's worldview is anti-anthropocentric, Angela Dalle Vacche concludes that Andre Bazin's...