Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 93
American and Russian, or Gangsters,
Tyrants, and Bombshells:
Three Reviews by Andre Bazin
Translated and edited by Bert Cardullo
A ndre Bazin
Andre Bazin’s impact on film, as theorist and critic, is widely considered to be
greater than that of any single director, actor, or producer, despite his early death
(at only forty) of leukemia in 1958. He is credited with almost single-handedly
establishing the study of film as an accepted intellectual pursuit, as well as with
being the spiritual father of the French New Wave. In 1951 Bazin co-founded and
became editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinema, the single most influential critical
periodical in the history of the cinema. Among the film critics who came under his
tutelage there were four who would go on to become the most renowned directors
of the postwar French cinema: Fran9 ois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette,
and Claude Chabrol. Bazin can also be considered the principal instigator of the
equally influential auteur theory: the idea that, since film is an art form, the director
of a movie must be perceived as the chief creator of its unique cinematic style.
In accordance with his ideas as propounded in the major English-language
publication of his work to date— What Is Cinema?,\o\maQS 1 (1967) and2(1971)—
Bazin has had the critical reputation of being the high priest of realism in film. His
ascribed orthodoxy maintains that the cinema has value only as it preserves the
transient details of life with a vivid objectivity—exemplified by the techniques of
the long take and deep focus—unequaled by any other art form. This continuing
image of Bazin the critic as the apostle of cinematic realism retains the attraction
of a steady beacon light in the murky waters of film scholarship. Citations can be
made quickly and easily, while explanations of Bazin’s work may be rendered
consistent as well as familiar. Yet it would be unjust not to relish the additional
dimens [ۜ