The Oak That Wished It Were a Reed: Georges Sadoul and André Bazin

Paragraph ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Marie
Keyword(s):  
Complex Relationship ◽  
French Film ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Soviet Cinema ◽  
Andre Bazin ◽  
Post War

The two leading French film writers and critics of the post-war period were André Bazin and Georges Sadoul. Their relationship has often been reduced to the controversy that followed the publication of Bazin's article on ‘Soviet Cinema and the Myth of Stalin’ in 1950. While the ensuing polemic undeniably drove them apart, the prevailing critical emphasis on this episode fails to do justice to either their critical work or its wider context. Indeed, the heartfelt tribute Sadoul paid to Bazin after the latter's death testifies to a much richer and more complex relationship between the two critics. Drawing on both published and archival sources, this article sets out to throw a new and more comprehensive light on this historically critical relationship and its context by examining the reactions of both critics to the ‘Stalin Myth’ controversy, post-war American cinema, and the form and content debate of the later 1940s.

Hail the Conquering Auteur Preston Sturges in La Revue du cinéma (1946–1949)

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Viviani
Keyword(s):  
Film Criticism ◽  
French Film ◽  
Auteur Theory ◽  
Andre Bazin ◽  
Post War

This chapter discusses the appeal of Preston Sturges’s movies among post-WWII French film critics. Focusing on La Revue du cinema (founded in 1946), it tries to understand why, after being hailed in France as one of the major filmmakers emerging in Hollywood in the 1940’s, Preston Sturges was nevertheless overlooked by the “auteur theory,” which was soon to bloom in Cahiers du cinema (founded in 1951). This chapter also deals with the appreciation of Preston Sturges’s works by André Bazin, a towering figure in post-war French film criticism, and in publications like Cahiers du cinema and Positif, including the recent rediscovery of his films.

Übersetzen als Entharmonisierungsstrategie

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 382-398
Author(s):  
Claus Telge
Keyword(s):  
German Literature ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Pablo Neruda ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
Post War ◽  
Hans Magnus Enzensberger ◽  
Formative Years

Abstract As a young poet, Hans Magnus Enzensberger sought to garner symbolic capital in the formative years of post-war German literature by translating Pablo Neruda. By arguing that Enzensberger uses a deharmonizing translation strategy to explore his distrust of metaphor, the article maps out coordinates for rethinking the complex relationship between Enzensberger’s poems and translations.

Religion and the State in Post-war Taiwan

2003 ◽  
Vol 174 ◽  
pp. 395-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Katz
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
The State ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
Academic Organizations ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Post War

This article explores the development of local religious traditions in post-war Taiwan, particularly since the ending of martial law in 1987. It focuses on the factors underlying the ongoing popularity of temple cults to local deities such as Mazu (originally the goddess of the sea, now worshipped as an all-powerful protective deity) and the Royal Lords (Wangye; plague deities now invoked to counter all manner of calamities). Special attention is devoted to the complex relationship between local community-based religious traditions and the state, including the loosening of restrictions on festivals, the use of temples as sites for political rallies during local elections, and the recent controversy over attempts to stage direct pilgrimages to mainland China. Other issues include debates over the “indigenization” of religious traditions in Taiwan and the growth of academic organizations devoted to the study of Taiwanese religion.

scholarly journals APIE NEREPREZENTACINIO KINO GALIMYBĘ. NUO ANDRÉ BAZINO IKI GILLES’IO DELEUZE’O

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 07-15
Author(s):  
Lukas Brašiškis
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
French Film ◽  
Andre Bazin ◽  
Film Critic

Remiantis prancūzų kino kritiko ir teoretiko André Bazino pateiktomis ontologinėmis kino teorijos tezėmis bei Gilles’io Deleuze’o knygos Kinas 1: Vaizdinys-judėjimas ketvirtajame skyriuje išplėtotais Henri Bergsono filosofijos argumentais, straipsnyje svarstomos žmogiškajai percepcijai būdingų redukcinių tendencijų nedubliuojančio kino galimybės. Klasikinio kino realizmo samprata yra palyginama su nereprezentacinio kino idėja, akcentuojant Bazino aprašomą iš dalies žmogišką, iš dalies technologinę kino prigimtį, kaip sąlygą galimybei priartėti prie Bergsono aprašytos acentriškos realybės. Vietoje straipsnio išvadų Bazino pasiūlytos kino neantropocentriškumo potencijos apmąstymas yra aktualizuojamas šiandieninėje filosofijoje pastebimo spekuliatyviojo posūkio fone.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: nereprezentacinis kinas, realizmas, pasakojimas, montažas, acentriška realybė, spekuliatyvusis posūkis.ON THE POSSIBILITY OF NON-REPRESENTIONAL CINEMA. FROM ANDRÉ BAZIN TO GILLES DELEUZELukas BrašiškisSummaryReferring to the ontological arguments shown in the theory of the French film critic and theorist André Bazin and the arguments elaborated by Gilles Deleuze in the fourth chapter of his book Cinema 1: Movement-Image, the possibility of the cinema that does not duplicate the reductive tendencies of the intentional human consciousness is discussed in this article. The classical understanding of the notion of cinematic realism is compared with the idea of non-representational cinema, accentuating the partially technological and partially subjective nature of film, which was described by Bazin, and its way to put the film viewer closer to the perception of the Bergsonian acentric reality. Instead of giving a clear conclusion, the Bazinian idea of the non-anthropocentric cinema is actualized in the light of the speculative turn in today’s philosophy.Keywords: nonrepresentational cinema, realism, narrative, montage, acentric reality, speculative turn.

Bazin, André (1918–1958)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Neville Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Early Death ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Orson Welles ◽  
French Film ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
French New Wave ◽  
Eric Rohmer ◽  
Andre Bazin ◽  
Robert Flaherty

André Bazin (born April 18, 1918, Angers, France–died November 11, 1958, Nogent-sur-Marne, France) was an influential French film critic who was active during the development of postwar film theory. Directing cine-clubs during the Nazi Occupation, he co-founded the monthly film magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1951 with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca, which he edited until his early death of leukaemia. Publishing 2,600 articles during his lifetime, he was preparing the four-volume collection of his writing, Qu-est-ce que le cinéma? [What Is Cinema?], at the time of his death. A champion of Italian Neorealism, Robert Flaherty, Jean Renoir, and Orson Welles, he helped to launch filmmakers of the French New Wave [Nouvelle vague] who developed their formal convictions as writers at Cahiers, including Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and his foster-son François Truffaut.

Documenting the Future: Visual Design

2019 ◽  
pp. 39-66
Author(s):  
Dan Dinello
Keyword(s):  
Visual Design ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
French Film ◽  
Production Values ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
The Future ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
Andre Bazin ◽  
The Aesthetic

This chapter details how Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men eschews the glamorous production values of the standard Hollywood film and moves into the transgressive realm of simulated reportage. It elaborates Children of Men's realism by Cuarón's incorporation of the handheld camera with uninterrupted long takes, complex compositions with multiple planes of action, and an emphasis on medium and long-distance shots rather than close-ups. It also analyses Children of Men's visual style that reflects the aesthetic of French film theorist Andre Bazin. The chapter discusses how Cuarón takes a 'present-in-the-future' approach to the mise-en-scène and insistently cross-references the nightmarish state-of-siege future with staged versions of historical, politically charged imagery. It examines Children of Men as a transhistorical critique.

A Woman of Paris: Geraldine Chaplin across French cinema

2020 ◽  
pp. 156-201
Author(s):  
Steven Rybin
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Film Criticism ◽  
French Cinema ◽  
Alain Resnais ◽  
Charlie Chaplin ◽  
French Film ◽  
Eric Rohmer ◽  
Major Figure ◽  
Andre Bazin ◽  
French Films

Charlie Chaplin was a major figure in postwar film criticism, particularly in France, where critical luminaries such as André Bazin, Éric Rohmer, François Truffaut, and Jacques Rivette all wrote on his work. Early in her career, Geraldine Chaplin inherited her father’s Parisian legacy, in both discourse on her public life in France (where she lived and worked early in her career) and also across a number of French films in which she played a central role. This chapter examines Geraldine’s work in France for filmmakers such as Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais, and Michel Deville in the context of French film culture’s fascination with her father, showing how Geraldine herself intervened in and redirected this critical legacy through her own performances.

scholarly journals A Film Aesthetic to Discover

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 47-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dudley Andrew
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Complete Control ◽  
Image Construction ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
French Theory ◽  
Andre Bazin ◽  
Post War

Abstract Challenging today’s ascendant digital aesthetic, this essay retraces one powerful line of French theory which treats film as an art which “discovers” significance rather than “constructs” meaning. Champions of today’s technology find that the digital at last permits complete control over image construction and therefore over “cinema effects.” Opposed to this aesthetic which targets the audience, the French aesthetic stemming from Roger Leenhardt and André Bazin concerns itself with the world the filmmaker engages. An interplay of presence and absence, as well as of human agency in the non-human environment, characterizes the French aesthetic at each phase of the filmic process: recording, composing and projecting. This article focuses on the central phase, composing, and on the terminological shift from “image” to “shot” picked up after Bazin by the Nouvelle Vague and passed forward to our own day through Serge Daney. In short, there is a Cahiers du cinéma line of thought, applied to questions of editing, which emphasizes the filtering implied in shots and the ellipses implied in their order. Conventional editors, on the other hand, manipulate or juxtapose images (using processes known as “compositing” today). The Cahiers line of thought developed in symbiosis with neo-realism and with a spate of post-war essay films of the “caméra-stylo” sort (Resnais, Franju) wherein editing works to cut away and filter out the inessential so that a mysterious or abstract subject can be felt as beginning to appear. Rivette, Rohmer and Godard have passed this line of thought on to a later generation represented by Philippe Garrel and a still later one for which Arnaud Desplechin stands as a good example.

‘If we cannot laugh like that, then how can we laugh?’

2020 ◽  
pp. 42-83
Author(s):  
Anna Toropova
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The Public ◽  
Soviet Cinema ◽  
Post War ◽  
Film Comedy

Elaborating an appropriate form of Soviet laughter was one of the most pressing tasks faced by the film industry in the 1930s. Increasingly sensitive to the ideological perils of failing to deliver more Soviet comedies to the public, industry bosses turned the development of this genre into a high priority. Such efforts, however, were persistently hindered by anxieties about facilitating the ‘mindless’ laughter of comic gags rather than the ‘meaningful’ laughter of triumphant celebration or satirical condemnation. Drawing on psychoanalytic readings of the comic, this chapter explores how the play with process of signification and disruption of habitual sense-making patterns became increasingly difficult to reconcile with the objectives of socialist realism. The thorny debates surrounding Konstantin Iudin’s two pre-war comedies, A Girl with Character (1939) and Hearts of Four (1941), are used to demonstrate the ways in which the project of creating film comedy based on Soviet material had come to a standstill by the beginning of the 1940s. The war against ‘mindless’ and ‘mechanical’ laughter pushed filmmakers to abandon the comic mode that had been so central to early Soviet cinema in preference for ego-affirming humour. The new paradigm of realistic comedy purged from the ‘excess’ of comic devices, however, little satisfied the expectations of Soviet audiences. Whilst the stultifying demands previously placed on the genre briefly eased as the Soviet public’s right to the ‘laughter of victors’ was granted after the end of WWII, the onset of the Zhdanovshchina brought post-war concessions in the sphere of comedy to a halt.

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