<b>Praise for the Previous Edition</b><br /><br /> "This is the most accurate, thoughtful and inspired translation of Bazin (or, for that matter, of any French film theorist) into English we have seen in a very long time. Barnard has taken up the challenge of cleaning up the apparent mess created by previous English versions of Bazin’s work, commenting upon a number of key passages and concepts and making Bazin’s prose more accessible and enjoyable than ever before. Any serious film scholar should make the extra effort necessary to obtain a copy of this book." "One of the many merits of Timothy Barnard's new translation is that it puts Bazin back into history. The translation restores some of the urgency of the writing, while the copious footnotes supply much-needed context. It is far more scholarly than the existing edition, both in its annotations and in the quality of the translation, which is both elegant and accurate." "For the first time, Timothy Barnard has given us the meticulous and scholarly edition of <i>What is Cinema?</i> that every lover of Bazin has dreamt of. The translator’s notes alone, with their enthralling discussions of important theoretical problems, make this edition worth consulting without delay." "Each [text] is accompanied by an impressive philological labour, consisting either in finding the original of a quotation that Bazin had distorted or in setting out hypotheses, backed up by evidence, as to the meaning Bazin accorded to one word or another. The most imposing (and conclusive) research concerns the meaning of a term essential to Bazin, <i>découpage</i>. Barnard devotes to this word and to the difficulty of translating it a twenty-page note that is a veritable exercise in historical semantics. Most of all, Barnard’s entire enterprise consists in reintroducing history into a body of work from which it had largely disappeared. Through his editorial choices, Barnard has in a sense turned <i>What is Cinema?</i> inside out like a glove, revealing part of its hidden historical dimension. Anchored by his apposite notes, Bazin’s texts recover their historical weight." "Girish Shambu informed me of a bookshop on Toronto’s College St. that carries a new translation of Andre Bazin’s <i>What is Cinema?</i> Because of copyright conflicts with the publisher of the previous translation, this edition, published by caboose, is unavailable [in the United States]. When I arrived and began perusing the film section, the clerk called out to me, 'Are you looking for <i>What is Cinema?' </i>Rather astonished, I replied, 'How did you know that?' 'Oh, everyone with a TIFF badge who comes in here is looking for that book,' he replied. It seems that bringing home this translation is, hyperbole aside, almost reminiscent of the Americans who had to smuggle <i>Ulysses</i> out of France in their suitcases during the 1920s. Girish told me that, when he bought the book a few days earlier, the clerk quipped, 'Some good, old-fashioned contraband, eh?'” "One of the boldest moves ever seen in Anglophone cinema studies. This new translation challenges us to jettison received wisdom and take a fresh look at what Bazin actually wrote, linking him tellingly to Malraux and Kracauer (an astounding and ingenious intuition). Barnard’s mission is to strip the questions in each essay bare for others to address. This tender and chivalrous sentiment is reinforced by painstaking translator’s notes, certain of which will undoubtedly become famous in their own right."