Bazin

Bazin is a surname of French origin. It is most widely recognized in connection with André Bazin, a French film critic and theorist whose work helped shape postwar cinema studies and criticism.

André Bazin (1918–1958) co-founded the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma in 1951, where he and his colleagues advanced a realist approach to cinema and stressed the importance of the viewer’s perception. He argued that cinema’s essence lies in its photographic relation to reality and that long takes and careful mise-en-scène can convey truth more effectively than montage alone. Bazin’s writings, including The Ontology of the Photographic Image and the essays collected in What Is Cinema?, helped anchor debates about film form, representation, and authorship. His ideas contributed to the critical climate that enabled the rise of the French New Wave in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Today, the surname Bazin remains in use among French-speaking populations and beyond. While Andre Bazin is the best-known bearer of the name in the cultural sphere, others with the surname have pursued diverse careers in science, arts, and public life, though none have achieved the same singular prominence in film studies.