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Screen 2007 48(1):25-43; doi:10.1093/screen/hjm002
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Screen. All rights reserved

Total cinema: Chronique d'un été and the end of Bazinian film theory

Sam DiIorio


  Abstract

This article explores the strong connections between the new camera, new microphones, and new production techniques used on Jean Rouch's and Edgar Morin's Chronique d'un été and realist debates in 1960s French film theory. In retrospect, Rouch's and Morin's verite portrait of everyday Paris can be taken as an early front in that decade's struggle between phenomenological and materialist approaches to the moving image. On the one hand, its aspiration to ‘true’ representation moved a step closer to André Bazin's dream of a total cinema that could integrally capture the real world. On the other, its inability to seize a universally-recognizable truth cast a shadow on mimesis, creating anxiety about what was not (and could not be) shown. My analysis re-places the film in context with Bazin, with the Cahiers wing of the New Wave, and with Rouch's and Morin's own work as writers and filmmakers in order to better understand the slow transition from one theoretical paradigm to another.

Please note the abstract above is a replacement of a previous abstract uploaded to Screen in error.


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