ROGER LEENHARDT, ANDRE BAZIN AND THE LITTLE SCHOOL OF THE MODERN FILM SPECTATOR

This article traces the links between Roger Leenhardt and Andre Bazin in the late 1940s and early 1950s: in that period, the articles published by both critics configure a modern notion of the filmmaker as an author. This notion will be one of the cornerstones of Cahiers du cinema, the magazine that Bazin founded in 1951 and which would quickly become one of the inescapable references in the reflection on cinema during the second half of the century. As the new critics conceive it, the concept of a cinematographic author redefines not only the activity of the filmmaker but also the notion of work and of spectator.