Andre Bazin’s New Media

André Bazin's writings on cinema are among the most influential reflections on the medium ever written. Even so, his critical interests ranged widely and encompassed the "new media" of the 1950s, including television, 3D film, Cinerama, and CinemaScope. Fifty-seven of his reviews and essays addressing these new technologies-their artistic potential, social influence, and relationship to existing art forms-have been translated here for the first time in English with notes and an introduction by leading Bazin authority Dudley Andrew. These essays show Bazin's astute approach to a range of visual media and the relevance of his critical thought to our own era of new media. An exciting companion to the essential What Is Cinema? volumes, André Bazin's New Media is excellent for classroom use and vital for anyone interested in the history of media.

Editor's Note: About This Collection Introduction: André Bazin Meets the New Media of the 1950s PART ONE. THE ONTOLOGY AND LANGUAGE OF TELEVISION1. The Aesthetic Future of Television 2. In Quest of Télégenie 3. Television Is Unbeatable for Live Coverage 4. Was It Live? Preserve Our Illusions 5. The Talking Head: Must the Commissaire Stand on His Head for TV? 6. Television Is Neither Theater nor Cinema 7. At the Venice Festival, TV Shares the Screen 8. Voice-Overs on TV: Let the Animals Talk 9. Looking at Television PART TWO. TELEVISION AMONG THE ARTS10. Long Live Radio! Down with the 8th Art! 11. A Seat at the Theater 12. False Improvisation and "Memory Lapses" on TV 13. To Serve Theater, Let Television Adopt Some Modesty 14. Respect the Spirit of Theater First and Foremost! 15. TV and the Disenchantment of Theater 16. Art on Television: A Program That Loses on All Counts 17. Reporting on Eternity: TV Visits the Musée Rodin PART THREE. TELEVISION AND SOCIETY18. A Contribution to an Erotology of Television 19. Censors, Learn to Censor 20. You Can Now "Descend into Yourself" 21. Television, Sincerity, Liberty 22. Information or Necrophagy 23. Television as Cultural Medium and The Sociology of Television 24. Do We Really Need Those Serials? 25. A Superb Clown Made Incoherent by TV 26. TV Can Popularize without Boredom or Betrayal PART FOUR. TELEVISION AND CINEMA27. Television and the Revival of Cinema 28. Television and Cinema 29. Is Television a Degradation for Filmmakers? 30. Some Films Are Better on the Small Screen Than the Large 31. Should Television Be Allowed to Chop Films to Pieces? 32. From Small Screen to Widescreen 33. Sacha Guitry Is Confident about TV, Just as He Was about Cinema in 1914 34. Jean Gabin Gets TV's "Sour Lemon" Prize 35. "The Glass Eye" Will Reveal a New Hitchcock 36. Hitchcock on TV 37. Renoir and Rossellini: Two Top Recruits for Television 38. Renoir and Rossellini Debut on TV 39. Cinema and Television: An Interview with Jean Renoir and Roberto Rossellini 40. About Television: A Discussion with Marcel Moussy and André Bazin PART FIVE. CINERAMA AND 3D41. New Screen Technologies 42. Cinerama: A Bit Late 43. Cinerama, a Disappointment 44. Cinema in 3D and Color: Amazing! 45. A New Stage in the Process: Math Equations for 3D 46. Will a War in Three Dimensions Take Place? 47. The Return of Metroscopix 48. The House of Wax: Scare Me . . . in Depth! 49. The Real Crime on La Rue Morgue: They Assassinated a Dimension! 50. The 3D Revolution Did Not Take Place PART SIX. CINEMASCOPE51. Will CinemaScope Save the Cinema? 52. CinemaScope and Neorealism 53. CinemaScope: The End of Montage 54. The Trial of CinemaScope: It Didn't Kill the Close-Up 55. Massacre in CinemaScope 56. Will CinemaScope Bring about a Television Style in Cinema? PART SEVEN. FINALE57. Is Cinema Mortal? Appendix: A Selective Reference Guide to 1950s French Television Index