The André Bazin Reader | caboose
Available only from caboose. $20 off with the purchase of Reading with Jean-Luc Godard. Details here. Take $10 off the new lower price of Montage, Découpage, Mise en scène: Essays on Film Form ($25 USD) and/or Introduction to a True History of Cinema ($30 USD individuals) with purchase of The Bazin Reader. Libraries receive Montage, Découpage, Mise en scène free with purchase of The Bazin Reader. Order here.
Beautiful 670-page sewn hardcover edition, with 45 texts by Bazin and an expanded glossary. With essays by the translator on the terms découpage, montage, mise en scène, technique and fait.
Read Jacques Aumont’s introductory essay and other samples from the book below.
Read the The André Bazin Reader translator's remarks on the Screen article ‘Bazin’s Third Hand’.
Praise for the previous caboose edition of Bazin’s writings:
This unique translation is a must-have for every film scholar working in English. It represents a massive and vital undertaking that, for the first time, brings together key essays by Bazin, many of which were previously unavailable in English — and it does so by going back to the original French versions rather than the edited and revised ones that circulated after Bazin’s death! This collection is simply the best access to Bazin’s work that currently exists in English. It also includes a very useful glossary of terms that in itself stands as an important contribution to film studies, with detailed discussions of key terms in Bazin’s writings. Attention to details — the documenting of sources, the identification of films in their original titles alongside the standard English titles and release date — as well as an introductory essay by major French film scholar Jacques Aumont add to the excellent translations to make this volume an essential document for every serious film studies library.
—Martin Lefebvre, Concordia University Research Chair in Film Studies
Coming soon: André Bazin, Rhetorician: Epigrams 1942–1958
Praise for the previous caboose edition of writings by André Bazin:
This is the most accurate, thoughtful and inspired translation of Bazin (or, for that matter, of any French film theorist) into English we have seen in a very long time. Barnard has taken up the challenge of cleaning up the apparent mess created by previous English versions of Bazin’s work, commenting upon a number of key passages and concepts and making Bazin’s prose more accessible and enjoyable than ever before. Any serious film scholar should make the extra effort necessary to obtain a copy of this book. — Paolo Cherchi Usai, Journal of Film Preservation
One of the many merits of Timothy Barnard's new translation is that it puts Bazin back into history. The translation restores some of the urgency of the writing, while the copious footnotes supply much-needed context. It is far more scholarly than the existing edition, both in its annotations and in the quality of the translation, which is both elegant and accurate. — Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Film Quarterly
For the first time, Timothy Barnard has given us the meticulous and scholarly edition of What is Cinema? that every lover of Bazin has dreamt of. The translator’s notes alone, with their enthralling discussions of important theoretical problems, make this edition worth consulting without delay. — Jacques Aumont, Université Paris 3
Each [text] is accompanied by an impressive philological labour, consisting either in finding the original of a quotation that Bazin had distorted or in setting out hypotheses, backed up by evidence, as to the meaning Bazin accorded to one word or another. The most imposing (and conclusive) research concerns the meaning of a term essential to Bazin, découpage. Barnard devotes to this word and to the difficulty of translating it a twenty-page note that is a veritable exercise in historical semantics. Most of all, Barnard’s entire enterprise consists in reintroducing history into a body of work from which it had largely disappeared. Through his editorial choices, Barnard has in a sense turned What is Cinema? inside out like a glove, revealing part of its hidden historical dimension. Anchored by his apposite notes, Bazin’s texts recover their historical weight.— Laurent Le Forestier, 1895
Girish Shambu informed me of a bookshop on Toronto’s College St. that carries a new translation of Andre Bazin’s What is Cinema? Because of copyright conflicts with the publisher of the previous translation, this edition, published by caboose, is unavailable [in the United States]. When I arrived and began perusing the film section, the clerk called out to me, “Are you looking for What is Cinema?” Rather astonished, I replied, “How did you know that?” “Oh, everyone with a TIFF badge who comes in here is looking for that book,” he replied. It seems that bringing home this translation is, hyperbole aside, almost reminiscent of the Americans who had to smuggle Ulysses out of France in their suitcases during the 1920s. Girish told me that, when he bought the book a few days earlier, the clerk quipped, “Some good, old-fashioned contraband, eh?” — Richard Porton
Vastly superior to the two volumes published by the University of California Press. I'm especially taken with the graceful flow of the translation. — Jonathan Rosenbaum
One of the boldest moves ever seen in Anglophone cinema studies. This new translation challenges us to jettison received wisdom and take a fresh look at what Bazin actually wrote, linking him tellingly to Malraux and Kracauer (an astounding and ingenious intuition). Barnard’s mission is to strip the questions in each essay bare for others to address. This tender and chivalrous sentiment is reinforced by painstaking translator’s notes, certain of which will undoubtedly become famous in their own right. — Dudley Andrew and Prakash Younger, CiNéMAS
Read Paolo Cherchi Usai’s review in the Journal of Film Preservation (Brussels) (no. 81, Fall 2009). Download PDF
Read Geoffrey Nowell-Smith's review in Film Quarterly (vol. 64, no. 3, Spring 2011). Download PDF
Read Jacques Aumont’s review (in French) in CiNéMAS (Montreal) (vol. 20, no. 1, Fall 2009). Download PDF
Read Dudley Andrew and Prakash Younger’s review in CiNéMAS (Montreal) (vol. 20, no. 1, Fall 2009). Download PDF
Read Donato Totaro’s review in the on-line film journal Offscreen.