What Cinema Is! offers an engaging answer to Andre Bazin's famous question, exploring his 'idea of cinema' with a sweeping look back at the near century of Cinema's phenomenal ascendancy.

• Written by one of the foremost film scholars of our time
• Establishes cinema's distinction from the current enthusiasm over audio-visual entertainment, without relegating cinema to a single, older mode
• Examines cinema's institutions and its social force through the qualities of key films
• Traces the history of an idea that has made cinema supremely alive to (and in) our times

Dudley Andrew is the R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University. The author of many books, including Mists of Regret (1995) and Popular Front Paris (2005), he is an Officier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.