Books on Cinema

François Truffaut (1931-1984) was the passionate film critic whose love for cinema was so strong that it could only lead him to eventually exchange the pen for the camera. A protégée of the influential film theorist André Bazin (1918-1958), in his writings for Cahiers du Cinéma he changed forever the way of seeing films, namely in his review of Jacques Becker's  Ali Baba et les Quarante Vouleurs ( Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves , 1954) where he presented the known la politique des auteurs (translated later by Andrew Sarris as “the auteur theory”). In it, Truffaut invoked the Giraudoux’s aphorism “there are no works, only auteurs” and applied that statement into cinematic terms, that is, a failed film from a great director will always be better than a successful one by a mediocre director (“the worst Hawks is more interesting than Huston’s best”, as he once stated), due to a personal vision of the world that is consistent along the auteur ’s oeuvre , mainly expressed through...

Cahiers du Cinéma is a French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. The controversial texts published in its first decade revolutionized the way the world thought about cinema. In this period, critics that would soon become an acclaimed group of filmmakers (Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol, Rivette, later known as part of the movement Nouvelle Vague ) wrote about la politique des auteurs (the auteur theory), that is, the director as the only author of the film, and became known for its violent attacks in the literary cinema, la tradition de qualité (quality tradition), that pleased the older generations, also called cinéma du papa (daddy's cinema). In the next years, Cahiers developed further its theories until the events of May 1968, where it became radically politicized in Maoism. These are the first 300 numbers of the film magazine. They begin in April 1951 with the iconic photography of Gloria Swanson in Suns...

Cahiers du Cinéma is a French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. The controversial texts published in its first decade revolutionized the way the world thought about cinema. In this period, critics that would soon become an acclaimed group of filmmakers (Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol, Rivette, later known as part of the movement Nouvelle Vague ) wrote about la politique des auteurs (the auteur theory), that is, the director as the only author of the film, and became known for its violent attacks in the literary cinema, la tradition de qualité (quality tradition), that pleased the older generations, also called cinéma du papa (daddy's cinema). In the next years, Cahiers developed further its theories until the events of May 1968, where it became radically politicized in Maoism. This anthology in four volumes reunites several texts by its most important contributors along almost three decades (1951-1978), all...

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) is, arguably, not only the most important living filmmaker, but also one of the greatest directors of all-time. A philosopher thinking with a camera, raising questions about cinema, society, politics and History, in innovative and non-conforming ways, his body of work has influenced filmmakers from Europe to America, from the mainstream to the avant-garde, more than any other director. He is best known for being part of the Nouvelle Vague with revolutionary movies as the cinephilic and exuberant noir À Bout de Souffle ( Breathless , 1960), the existentialist  Vivre Sa Vie ( My Life to Live , 1962) or the disconsolately romantic Le Mépris ( Contempt , 1963). From the end of the '60s until mid-'70s he entered in a militant phase with Jean-Pierre Gorin and continued a controversial  oeuvre with political films as Vladimir et Rosa (1971). In the '80s he returned to, in a way, more commercial pictures as Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie) (1980) or Prénom: ...

André Bazin (1918-1958) was one of the most influential film critics and theorists. A co-founder of the renowned film magazine   Cahiers du Cinéma , his writings on the superiority of deep focus and long takes against the montage, have contributed to much discussion about cinema along the decades. Bazin defended cinema as an art of realism expressed through mise en scène , and that ambiguity should be led in an image by presenting reality as a whole, so that the spectator could interpret, by himself, a scene. For such reasons he acclaimed directors like Jean Renoir, Orson Welles and William Wyler.  Most of his writings are collected in the four volumes of  Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? . Some of these were translated to an english   version, in two volumes, between 1967 and 1971  ( What is Cinema? ) that became a crucial reference in film courses. Excerpts :  "The truth of the matter is, that if you are looking for the precursor of Orson Welles, it is ...