André Bazin

French film theorist (1918–1958); co-founder of Cahiers du cinéma (1951) and spiritual father of the Nouvelle Vague. For the purposes of this wiki he matters because he is the only contemporary cinema figure whom Merleau-Ponty names in the preparatory notes for his unfinished 1960–61 course "Cartesian Ontology and the Ontology of Today" — where MP writes simply "André Bazin ontologie du cinéma" ("André Bazin ontology of cinema"). For Carbone, this marginal note identifies Bazin as the practitioner of the a-philosophical thought MP hoped to formulate philosophically, making Bazin a pivotal figure in the prehistory of philosophy-cinema.

Key Points

  • "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" (1945): Bazin's foundational essay. In the context of surrealist photography, Bazin writes: "the logical distinction between what is imaginary and what is real tends to disappear. Every image is to be seen as an object, and every object as an image." This is the passage Carbone treats as the seed of MP's own ontology of the image — which MP elaborates in Eye and Mind as mutual precession.
  • Interlocutor of the late MP: MP cites Bazin only in the 1960–61 course notes (never in published work). The citation is compact — "André Bazin ontologie du cinéma" — but programmatic: Bazin names the a-philosophy MP plans to develop philosophically. Bazin is the only named cinema figure in that course.
  • Possible IDHEC connection: Dudley Andrew's thesis (André Bazin, 1978/2013) holds that Bazin — then director of cultural services at IDHEC — solicited MP's 1945 lecture "The Film and the New Psychology." François Albera's 2013 article "Maurice Merleau-Ponty et le cinéma" does not confirm this. The question is undecided.
  • Phenomenological-realist theory of cinema: Bazin held that cinema's proper vocation is respect for reality — ontological realism grounded in the automaticity of photographic capture, the long take, and deep focus. His preferred examples were Italian neorealism, Jean Renoir, and Orson Welles. This strand is largely opposite to the Soviet-montage strand MP draws on in the 1945 IDHEC lecture (Kuleshov, Pudovkin) — a tension Pierre Rodrigo exploits in his critique of MP.
  • Against "logical distinction between movement and the mobile": Bazin's residual realism keeps a "logical distinction" — ontological primacy of the real over the image — that MP's mutual precession precisely dissolves (Carbone ch. 2 p. 45). So Carbone reads Bazin as pointing toward the philosophy-cinema project without fully accomplishing it.
  • "Critics became philosophers": Deleuze's late interview "On The Time-Image" names Bazin as paradigmatic of film critics who "became philosophers the moment they set out to formulate an aesthetics of cinema." Deleuze and Carbone agree on Bazin's philosophical importance but draw different conclusions.

Principal Relevance to This Wiki

Bazin's importance here is programmatic rather than doctrinal. He is the figure who (a) had an ontology of cinema worth the name, (b) did not develop it into a concept-based philosophy, and (c) was cited by MP as the exemplar of the "spontaneous philosophy" operating in cinema. Carbone reads Bazin as the missing link between MP's 1945 lecture (which does not cite Bazin) and MP's 1960–61 course notes (which do). The late MP's a-philosophy is, on Carbone's reading, an attempt to philosophize what Bazin had been doing as cinema criticism.

Carbone's Reading

"The theoretical convergence between the later Merleau-Ponty and Bazin seems to center around a new ontological consideration of vision and thus of the image." (carbone-2019-philosophy-screens, ch. 2 p. 41)

But Carbone also notes Bazin's limits: Bazin's "logical distinction between the movement and the mobile" keeps a residual realism that MP's mutual precession (in Eye and Mind) surpasses. Bazin is the last figure on the realist side of the threshold; MP crosses it.

Connections

  • is the exemplar for philosophy-cinema — the practitioner of the a-philosophy MP aimed to formulate
  • is cited (once, programmatically) in merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy — "André Bazin ontologie du cinéma" in the 1960–61 course notes
  • is surpassed by mutual precession — Bazin's residual realism insists on a "logical distinction between movement and the mobile" that MP's formula dissolves
  • contrasts with Soviet montage theorists (Kuleshov, Vertov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin) — Bazin preferred the long take and deep focus; MP's 1945 IDHEC lecture drew on the opposed tradition
  • influences the Nouvelle Vague (Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette) — who were his Cahiers heirs

Open Questions

  • Is Andrew's thesis that Bazin invited MP to IDHEC correct? (Albera contests it; unresolved.)
  • What would a philosophy-cinema that fully honors Bazin's ontological realism — rather than surpassing it via Carbone's mutual-precession reading — look like?

Sources

  • carbone-2019-philosophy-screens — principal source for Bazin on this wiki. Ch. 2 pp. 33–48 (especially "Ontology of the Image as Figure of Mutual Precession"); pp. 50–52 (Deleuze on Bazin's philosophical becoming).
  • merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy — 1960–61 course notes containing the cryptic "André Bazin ontologie du cinéma" reference.
  • carbone-2015-flesh-of-images — ch. 4 pp. 56–62 "Ontology of the Image as Figure of Mutual Precession." The earlier and more extended treatment of the MP-Bazin convergence. Discusses Bazin's 1945 "Ontology of the Photographic Image" essay in relation to MP's E&M formula on precession; identifies Bazin's residual realism as what MP's mutual precession surpasses.