Cinema

For Alain Badiou, films think, and it is the task of the
philosopher to transcribe that thinking. What is the subject to
which the film gives expressive form? This is the question that
lies at the heart of Badiou's account of cinema.

He contends that cinema is an art form that bears witness to the
Other and renders human presence visible, thus testifying to the
universal value of human existence and human freedom. Through the
experience of viewing, the movement of thought that constitutes the
film is passed on to the viewer, who thereby encounters an aspect
of the world and its exaltation and vitality as well as its
difficulty and complexity. Cinema is an impure art cannibalizing
its times, the other arts, and people - a major art precisely
because it is the locus of the indiscernibility between art and
non-art. It is this, argues Badiou, that makes cinema the social
and political art par excellence, the best indicator of our
civilization, in the way that Greek tragedy, the coming-of-age
novel and the operetta were in their respective eras.

Auteur

Alain Badiou was Chair of the Department of Philosophy at
the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and is one of the
leading philosophers in France today. His many books include
Being and Event and The Century.

Résumé
For Alain Badiou, films think, and it is the task of the philosopher to transcribe that thinking. What is the subject to which the film gives expressive form? This is the question that lies at the heart of Badiou's account of cinema.

He contends that cinema is an art form that bears witness to the Other and renders human presence visible, thus testifying to the universal value of human existence and human freedom. Through the experience of viewing, the movement of thought that constitutes the film is passed on to the viewer, who thereby encounters an aspect of the world and its exaltation and vitality as well as its difficulty and complexity. Cinema is an impure art cannibalizing its times, the other arts, and people a major art precisely because it is the locus of the indiscernibility between art and non-art. It is this, argues Badiou, that makes cinema the social and political art par excellence, the best indicator of our civilization, in the way that Greek tragedy, the coming-of-age novel and the operetta were in their respective eras.

Contenu

Acknowledgments viii

Foreword ix

1 "Cinema Has Given Me So Much" 1

2 Cinematic Culture 21

3 Revisionist Cinema 34

4 Art and its Criticism 40

5 The Suicide of Grace: Le Diable probablement 48

6 A Man Who Never Gives In 50

7 Is the Orient an Object for the Western Conscience? 54

8 Reference Points for Cinema's Second Modernity 58

9 The Demy Affair 64

10 Switzerland: Cinema as Interpretation 67

11 Interrupted Notes on the French Comedy Film 72

12 Y a tellement de pays pour aller 77

13 Restoring Meaning to Death and Chance 82

14 A Private Industry, Cinema is also a Private Spectacle 86

15 The False Movements of Cinema 88

16 Can a Film Be Spoken About? 94

17 Notes on The Last Laugh 100

18 "Thinking the Emergence of the Event" 105

19 The Divine Comedy and The Convent 129

20 Surplus Seeing: Histoire(s) du cinéma 132

21 Considerations on the Current State of Cinema 138

22 The Cinematic Capture of the Sexes 151

23 An Unqualified Affirmation of Cinema's Enduring Power 162

24 Passion, Jean-Luc Godard 166

25 "Say Yes to Love, or Else be Lonely": Magnolia 176

26 Dialectics of the Fable: The Matrix 193

27 Cinema as Philosophical Experimentation 202

28 On Cinema as a Democratic Emblem 233

29 The End of a Beginning: Tout va bien 242

30 The Dimensions of Art: Forgiveness 252

31 The Perfection of the World, Improbable yet Possible 258

Notes 261