Andre Bazin on Documentary

Cinema's Urge to Explore
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-0-520-39943-3
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 410 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm

Documentary is at the core of André Bazin’s powerful views of cinema. This collection, curated by renowned film scholar Dudley Andrew, brings to English-language readers sixty-two articles in which Bazin interrogated films about geography, history, animals, painting, and, especially, distant lands and peoples. Both an advocate and critic of popular science and exotic travelogues, Bazin applauded the creativity of impure forms like docu-fiction and the genre he baptized the “essay film.” Engaging minor short subjects, as well as classic works by Robert Flaherty, Jean Rouch, Alain Resnais, and Chris Marker, Bazin’s incisive prose is at once intricately beautiful and playfully entertaining—and his brilliant reflections on both the morality and the aesthetics of documentary remain compelling and urgent today, when spectacles sold as reality flood our screens.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bazin, Andre

Bazin, André

Andrew, Dudley

Weitere Mitwirkende

Glassman, Deborah

Durovicova, Natasa

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Dokumentarfilme
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmproduktion, Filmtechnik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Exploring Bazin on Documentary

PART ONE. FILMS OF EXPLORATION

1. The Evolution of the Exploration Film

2. Kon-Tiki; The Grandeur and Servitude of Filmed Reportage

3. Scott of the Antarctic: Ice Without Eskimos

4. Le Monde de silence (dir. Jacques Cousteau)

5. A Terrific Program: Annapurna, Water Birds, Le Grand Méliès

6. Spiritual Adventures: Naufragé volontaire and La Forêt sacrée

7. La Forêt sacrée (The sacred forest)
8. Iawa: Man, the Unknown

9. Now Showing: Lost Continent

10. Lost Continent

11. A Mock Documentary: Lost Continent

12. Naked Amazon, “Dressed Up” Just a Bit

13. Empire in the Sun
14. The Last Paradise

15. Will Italian Cinema Abandon. . . Neorealism for Neo-exoticism?

16. The Flute and the Arrow at Cannes

17. Hunters, Learn to Hunt!

18. Paysans noirs (Black farmers)

19. A Teacher in Africa: La Plus Belle des vies

20. Les Maîtres fous (dir. Jean Rouch)

PART TWO. DOCUMENTARY SUBJECTS

A. Environment and the Humans Within It
21. Landscape in Cinema

22. The Tour de France of French Cinema

23. Farrebique, the Paradox of Realism

24. Long Live Farrebique!

25. Louisiana Story

26. A Great Film: Flaherty’s Louisiana Story

27. Crin Blanc (White Mane)

B. Animals in the Lead
28. The Science Film: Accidental Beauty

29. Animal Films Reveal the World of Cinema

30. The Great Adventure

31. The Perils of Perri
32. In the Sands of Central Asia, an Admirable Documentary

33. Pity for the Animals

34. Toro: A Revolution in Realism

35. Afternoon of the Bulls: Ninety Minutes of Truth
36. Death Every Afternoon: La Course de taureaux

C. The Extraordinary Within the Ordinary
37. Here’s Proof That the Short Is a Spectacle

38. Sports Reporting in Televised News

39. Winter Olympics: Skiing and Cinema

40. Soviet Documentaries: In the Circus Arena and Whaling in the Antarctic

41. Lourdes et ses miracles

42. A Tele-Lensed Film: Little Fugitive

D. Bringing History Back to Life
43. La Bataille du rail (The Battle of the Rails)

44. La Bataille du rail and Ivan the Terrible

45. On Why We Fight: History, Documents, and Newsreels

46. A True Film: Leclerc

47. In Search of Lost Time: Paris 1900

48. Clemenceau by Clemenceau

49. André Gide, Alive and Well!

50. Hôtel des Invalides (dir. Georges Franju)

E. The New French Documentary
51. Statues Always Die Twice (dir. Alain Resnais and Chris Marker)

52. Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog, dir. Alain Resnais)

53. En liberté sur les routes d’URSS and Chris Marker’s Dimanche à Pékin

54. Lettre de Sibérie (dir. Chris Marker)

55. Lettre de Sibérie in a New Style: The “Documented Essay”

F. Documentary at the Edge: Art and Death
56. God, the Painter, and the Film on Art

57. Picasso, Clouzot, and Metamorphosis

58. Le Mystère Picasso

59. Death on the Screen

G. Envoi
60. Every Film Is a Social Documentary

ADDENDUM: TWO ESSENTIAL ESSAYS TRANSLATED BY HUGH GRAY
61. Cinema and Exploration

62. Painting and Cinema

Appendix: Chronological List of Articles

Index of Film Titles

General Index

Über Autor(innen)

André Bazin (1918–1958), cofounder of the renowned Cahiers du cinéma, was a supremely influential French film critic and theorist.

Dudley Andrew is author of many books, including What Cinema Is! Bazin's Quest and Its Charge, and has edited several collections of writings by and about Bazin. Named a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, he is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and of Film at Yale University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Deborah Glassman has translated numerous scholarly works, including Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives and History of Structuralism, both by François Dosse. Formerly the director of the CIEE-UC film program in Paris, she has worked for decades in France, Tunisia, and other Francophone countries.

Nataša Durovicová is a film scholar and translator who works on the history of language transfers in cinema. She recently retired from her position as house editor of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where she also taught the program's translation workshop.