Bazin

In the very beginning of the article, Bazin asks, “did the years from 1928 to 1930 a actually witness the birth of a new cinema?” (pg.155) The answer to this, as Bazin describes, is absolutely. What the rest of the article speaks about is the effect of dialogue on the film industry that was at one time silent. In bringing up language in film, Bazin starts talking about montage. “it was montage that gave birth to film an as art, setting it apart from mere animated photography, in short, creating a language.” (pg.156) Montage is explained as being able to provide meaning to certain films such as providing the viewer with a better sense of an amount of time going by. The images in montage gained meaning from being together in a sequence and would lack meaning if shown individually. Bazin suggests that montage is used to show the viewer what the director wants you to think about. “the meaning is not in the image, it is in the shadow of the image projected by montage onto the field of consciousness of the spectator.” ) pg.158)

After discussing the silent films, Bazin has a section entitled, “The evolution of Editing since the Advent of Sound.” (pg.161) Here, Bazin lays out how editing changed over the years due to films switching over from silent to sound. Bazin then touches on montage again and its role in films since sound became incorporated. Later in the article Bazin says, “it seems to be that the decade from 1940 to 1950 marks a decisive step forward in the development of the language of the film” (pg.166) It is then discussed how the directors role has changed since language in film and how the director now serves as both a director, an artist, and an author as well.