André Bazin

the, you know, the chapter, the first chapter, in fact, of a book, Hollywood Genres, that I wrote on the basis of my dissertation was entitled The Genius of the System.

And that was the first time I ripped off Andre Bazin for that quote, which later became the title of it.

a book on the Hollywood studio system.

And for me, that's indicative of the very, very close ties between the industrial procedures and the systems of authorship and the storytelling process and the types of stories that have been told over time.

And I, I went to Columbia.

There was a critic called Andrew Sarris who was, like, one of the great critics of the time, and he, he and André Bazin, you know, I think invented the auteur theory, and huge influence on the whole great generation of Coppola and Bogdanovich and Spielberg and Scorsese.

And he would just come into class, and he was half drunk on Ozu, and he would just talk with great love about the movies he loved.

And I got the bug.

No.

Um, but anyway, uh, my, so my memory is, uh, when Nick Ransbottom, our, our late, uh, dear departed friend, was in town in 2020, um, I picked him up from the house he was staying at.

I think he was house-sitting for somebody in St. Paul.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I always struggle to explain it to people.

Even people in Chicago who I was friends with, where it's like, you know, yeah, like, the, the Music Box is, like, incredible.

I own a bunch of Music Box merch, big fan of Music Box.

Upon its release, Hearst, who the film is largely based on, prohibited any mention of the film in his newspapers, him being a newspaper mogul.

And although it was a critical success, Kane failed to recoup its costs at the box office and faded from view after its release, but returned to public attention when it was praised by French critics such as André Bazin, is it, or is it Bazin? And re-released in 1956.

In 58, the film was voted number nine on the prestigious Brussels 12 list at the 1958 World Expo.

It's frequently cited as the greatest film ever made.

Enriched and entertained? Definitely.

Brilliant, brilliant.

And also to all those who say criticism is pointless and, you know, it doesn't do anyone anything and films can exist without critics, is Cahiers du Cinéma and André Bazin, people like him, who actually brought so many of these movies of obscurity and were completely ignored elsewhere for years and years and years and revived them and gave them kind of like... raison d'être gave them this kind of freshness and people to see them from different ways you know like they did the same for like the the man who shot liberty balance they did that for all those westerns you know so i think criticism is important when it's done properly you know

Yes, yes.

I have a take on what Robinson's motivations are here when we get to the jury.

And Andre Bazin was on the scene.

He is the premier film critic from France at this period, during this period.

And he said that this is one of the most boring festivals we've known.

Set on the last

two days of 1999, Strange Days is predicated on the notion of clips, chunks of digitally recorded subjective experience, another step towards the virtual reality that Andre Bazin considered cinema's ultimate goal.

Addicted wireheads wear improvised camcorders called squids in playback moments from somebody else's life.

More cynical than Lady and the Lake, the 1946 noir in which the camera's point of view was identical to that of unseen detective Philip Marlowe, Strange Days posits Ralph Fiennes as the smiling Lenny Nero, a disgraced vice cop turned super hustler, dealing illegal clips like a degenerate private eye peddling info.