Andre Bazin on Adaptation

These essays on literature and cinema transport us to a time when French ciné-clubs, specialized magazines, and filmmaker-theorists created new thinking about movies and the world. André Bazin’s writing, beautifully orchestrated by Dudley Andrew, can be read as the intellectual sequel to Walter Benjamin's cultural critique of the 1930s.—Alice Kaplan, author of Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis For anyone who believes cinema is literature by another means—a conceit that is often (if not exclusively) French—this collection of literary film criticism by the great André Bazin is a veritable bounty, and Dudley Andrew is the ideal person to bring it to us.—Jonathan Rosenbaum, author of Cinematic Encounters “Long recognized as one of the most important voices in classical films theory, André Bazin has also been one of the most incisive and original writers about adaptation theory and practice. Fortunately, those always subtle and insightful essays are now available in this ranging and balanced collection of well-known and not-so-well-known translations of Bazin's sustained reflections on the relations of film, literature, and the other arts. Also fortunately, the editor and guide for this work is Dudley Andrew, the most devoted and knowledgeable Bazin scholar in English.”—Timothy Corrigan, author of The Essay Film This is a great volume that presents consequential but sometimes little-known writings by Bazin to an American audience. Any translation of Bazin is a major event for the field, and this one presents an absolutely key area of Bazin’s thinking.—Dana Polan, author of Dreams of Flight: The Great Escape in American Film and Culture