What Is Cinema? Volume II

These two volumes have been classics of film studies for as long as they’ve been available and are considered the gold standard in the field of film criticism. Although Bazin made no films, his name has been one of the most important in French cinema since World War II. He became coeditor of the influential Cahiers du Cinema, which under his leadership became one of the world’s most distinguished publications. His proteges included Jean Renoir, who contributed a short foreword to Volume I, and Francois Truffaut, who provides the same for Volume II. This new edition includes graceful forewords to each volume by Bazin scholar and biographer Dudley Andrew, who reconsiders Bazin and his place in contemporary film study. The essays themselves are erudite but always accessible, intellectual, and stimulating. As Renoir puts it, the essays of Bazin “will survive even if the cinema does not.”

Author Biography

Andre Bazin (1918—1958) was one of France’s best-known and respected film critics, and mentor to such directors as Truffaut and Godard. Hugh Gray (translator, 1900—1981) was Professor of Film, Theater, Aesthetics, and Humanities at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Loyola Marymount University. Dudley Andrew is Professor of Film Studies and of Comparative Literature at Yale University. He is the author of Andre Bazin (1990) and Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film (1995).