ANDRE BAZIN’S MYTH OF TOTAL CINEMA

Andre Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist. He had a kick start with his career in films around 1943 and was also a co-founder of Cahiers du cinema magazine in 1951. He played a major role during post world war 2. He wrote an article which was another entitled as The Myth of Total Cinema and had everything about the evolution and future of cinema. He was of the thought that some investors were just making money out of the profit gained through fills, while some were really of a vision to create great films. According to him cinema never shows the realty and is complex in nature. And everything which is being added to cinema takes it further and further to cinema, which means cinema has still not been invented.

            His theory tries to explain that due to the emerge of new technologies there is high amount of realism that is achieved through cinema which is great. He also argues for the inventors of photography and cinema as they were not satisfied with the production of technology as sale.  His myth of total cinema was that cinema is a mixture of illusion of life which guided and inspired the invention of cinema. He mainly talks about the freedom of interpretation of various artists and not of picture only.  He not only highlights the negative aspects but also points out the positive aspect by praising cinema by the qualities of editing, focus long shots, which gives the audience freedom of interpretation.

            Bazin says if the origin of an art reveals something of its nature then some aspects of technologies may consider as the new aspect of cinema, which is the reality put of the total myth. According to him, as said earlier cinema has not been invented as it was born from the converging of various elements out of a myth.

Until now I explained everything right from Andre Bazin till his theory, but I feel that Bazin’s predictions were pretty much true. As movies today are becoming very much true or real. His theory regarding the total cinema after 50 years from his death is being reviewed by various film theorists. His boldness of putting cinema in the history of arts. But if Bazin was in today’s world then he would probably be surprised by seeing that how much close we have reached to his myth, in achieving the ideal inventors and thinkers dreamed of during the birth of cinema.