André Bazin

Born

1918-04-18

Died

1959-11-11

Birthplace

Angers, Maine-et-Loire, France

Biography

André Bazin (18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist. Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1951, with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. He is notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema. His call for objective reality, deep focus, and lack of montage are linked to his belief that the interpretation of a film or scene should be left to the spectator. This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s, which emphasized how the cinema could manipulate reality.