The “Is” in What Is Cinema?: On André Bazin and Stanley Cavell

This article rereads André Bazin’s “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” and applies this rereading to Bazin’s larger project of articulating a concept of, or program for, fi lm realism. The article proceeds by employing Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed as a heuristic device for gaining new purchase on Bazin’s writing on fi lm realism and ontology. In doing so, it argues that the “Ontology” essay does not seek to provide an account of cinematic essence but is rather open-ended and phenomenological in a way that bears remarkable and productive similarities to Cavell’s work.