ABSTRACT
In a classic essay from 1948, the influential French film theorist André Bazin claims that a theatre visitor comes away with a ‘better conscience’ than the film spectator. A theatrical play has a ‘more uplifting, a nobler … effect than the satisfaction which follows a good film’ (‘Theater,’ 98). Whereas theatre calls for an ‘active individual consciousness,’ the film ‘requires only a passive adhesion’ (99). According to Bazin, a member of a film audience becomes part of a collective. The way the viewer is encouraged to identify with the hero has the effect of rendering ‘emotion uniform,… the result of which is to turn the audience into a “mass”‘ (99). Instead of exciting the spectator, cinema calms its viewer.
