Bazin positions his work at the intersection where the history of the previous century converges with the trajectory of cinema. However, while this intersection occurs with World War II, the gap had already been opened during the decade that prepared for it, to be further widened in the decades of expectations and disappointments that would follow.

Nothing could, in society and art, be as it was before, especially in the quintessentially modern art form, cinema. This very inherent contradiction, between the world of extreme criticality and the available means to transcend it, became the driving force of the intellectual struggle waged by Bazin; and this very contradiction exists within the confines of his endeavor and defines both the frustration and, at the same time, the unexpected fulfillment of his aim.

The volume includes some of the most significant articles by André Bazin on cinema, published in the 1950s in the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema.