André Bazin (1918–1958) is one of the most
influential critics ever to have written about cinema. He
contributed daily reviews to Paris’s largest-circulation newspaper,
Le Parisien libéré, and wrote hundreds of essays for weeklies (Le
nouvel observateur, Télérama) and such esteemed monthly journals as
Esprit and Cahiers du cinéma (which he cofounded). A social
activist, he directed cine-clubs and, from 1945 to 1950, worked for
the Communist outreach organization Travail et Culture.
Timothy Barnard is a professional translator with
a prominent background in film history and theory. He is the
publisher of caboose books in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Praise for the Previous Edition
"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." "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." "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." "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." "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?'” "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."
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