What Cinema Is!

"With this elegant volume, Dudley Andrew brilliantly continues his extended project of producing a historiography of film theory and of French cinema. He has given us a book worthy of Andre Bazin?s intelligence, originality, curiosity, and spirit." Eric Smoodin, University of California at Davis "A new slant on Bazin with fresh disclosures for our era of digital media is always welcome, especially from Dudley Andrew, Bazin's foremost expositor. Andrew's graceful and analytic prose is peppered with timely provocations of his own, starting with the Preface. Made manifest throughout is the continuing relevance of Bazin's devotion to cinema and compassion for humanity." Edward Branigan, University of California at Santa Barbara

Dudley Andrew is the R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University. The author of many books, including Mists of Regret (1995) and Popular Front Paris (2005), he is an Officier de lordre des arts et des lettres and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Acknowledgments ix Prologue: The Target of Film Theory xiii 1 The Camera Searching in the World 1 Is a Camera Essential? 1 The Cahiers Axiom 4 Tracing Bazins Trace 11 Images Contested Today 17 2 The Editors Discovery of Form 29 Bazins Forerunners 31 Documentaries in the Cauldron of History 37 The Cahiers Line 42 Pursuing Cinema in the Twenty-First Century 48 3 The Projector as Spectators Searchlight 66 The Power of Projection 69 Opening the Screens Dimensions 74 Frame as Threshold 79 Writing out of the Frame 90 4 The Evolution of the Subjects of Cinema 98 Modern Film: Between Classic and Avant-Garde 99 The Ontogeny of Cinema 110 Credits and Auteurs: An Ecology of Adaptation 123 Fidelity: The Economy of Adaptation 129 Index 147