Malraux, Benjamin, Bazin: A Triangle of Hope for Cinema

Abstract

André Malraux became professionally involved with the cinema in the mid to late 1930s, coming to it along the well-trod path of adaptation, that is, as a way to exploit his novels, to elaborate their aesthetic in a different medium and to disseminate their politics. But at this very moment he was also formulating his vast project in the history of art, where cinema was the latest art that needed to be accounted for and where photography played the key enabling role throughout. World War II interrupted—permanently it turned out—whatever notions Malraux may have harbored for engaging in further filmmaking or film theory. But, as if in recompense, the Occupation raised up a most prodigious acolyte, André Bazin. Bazin was devoted to Malraux and, as he launched his career as film critic in 1945, he seemed eager to develop what Malraux had started, banking on his hero’s ideas. However, Bazin was even more devoted to the cinema and would soon take his own route into territory Malraux had more casually wandered into in the 1930s.