André Bazin

André Bazin was a French film critic and theorist whose writings on cinematic realism shaped postwar film criticism and influenced the French New Wave.

Ontology of the Photographic Image: André Bazin’s essay arguing that photography’s automatic production gives images a distinctive connection to the reality they record. This essay grounds his claim that cinema can preserve reality rather than merely interpret it.
Long Take: A film shot that continues for an extended duration without an edit. Long takes let action unfold in time instead of being divided into selected fragments.
François Truffaut: A French film director and critic whose work became central to the French New Wave. Truffaut wrote for the journal Bazin co-founded and dedicated The 400 Blows to him.
Sergei Eisenstein: A Soviet film director and theorist who developed influential theories of montage. Eisenstein’s meaning-making through collision contrasts with Bazin’s defense of spatial continuity.
French New Wave: A French film movement of the late 1950s and 1960s known for personal, formally adventurous filmmaking. Several New Wave directors had been critics in the circle Bazin nurtured.
Photographic Realism: An approach that values photography for recording the visible world through light-sensitive processes. Bazin treated photography’s mechanical recording as a foundation for cinema’s realism.
Mise-en-scène: The arrangement of actors, settings, lighting, and movement within a film shot. Bazin valued staging that lets viewers explore a shot’s relationships and ambiguities.
Jean-Luc Godard: A French-Swiss film director associated with the French New Wave and formally innovative filmmaking. Godard emerged from the same critical culture Bazin helped build at Cahiers du cinéma.
Soviet Montage Theory: A film theory that treats the collision and arrangement of shots as a source of meaning. Bazin objected when montage imposed a single interpretation on ambiguous events.
The 400 Blows: François Truffaut’s 1959 film about a misunderstood boy growing up in Paris. Truffaut dedicated this New Wave film to Bazin, who died during its production.

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