David Bordwell, Film Scholar and Longtime Criterion Collection Contributor, Dies at 76

variety.com:

Diego Ramos Bechara editor David Bordwell, an influential film scholar and longtime professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, died Feb.

29 after battling a “long illness,” according to the university. He was 76. UW-Madison described Bordwell as a prolific researcher, dedicated teacher and passionate cinephile — a man who helped guide “countless colleagues, students, and film lovers to heightened awareness of the medium’s artistic possibilities.” For more than two decades, Bordwell penned commentaries, produced visual and written essays and interviews for films in the Criterion Collection and was seen and heard on 50 episodes of “Observations on Film Art” on the Criterion Channel, who described him as a “tireless champion of cinema,” in a statement.

A post shared by Criterion Collection (@criterioncollection) He taught at UW-Madison from 1973 until his retirement in 2004 and was the university’s Jacques Ledoux Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the time of his death.

Damien Chazelle, Oscar-winning writer and director (“La La Land”), said that he “learned more about film from reading David Bordwell than from any other writer.” “To me, he was America’s André Bazin, a thinker and historian who massively expanded the field and found a way to marry theory and criticism in a wholly new way,” Chazelle continued. “‘Narration in the Fiction Film’ changed how I think about storytelling in film, and ‘Figures Traced in Light’ changed how I think about framing. ‘The Way Hollywood Tells It’ changed how I think about Hollywood.