‘The solid reality of a piece of ore’: Alain Resnais’s and Robert Hessens’ Guernica (1950) in relation to André Bazin’s theory of cinematic realism

In their film Guernica of 1950 Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens re-work the genre of the documentary film about art to develop a powerful and expressive address to both historical and contemporary political events, in what becomes an extraordinary anticipatory register. Re-examining the film’s imagery, this article proposes that it should be understood not only in relation to the bombing of 1937 which it depicts, but also in relation to contemporary Cold War anxieties. Furthermore, it argues that the purchase on reality which the film begins to construct with its departure from a purportedly documentary genre helps to deepen and extend our understanding of André Bazin’s theory of cinematic realism in ways which may be situated in relation to wider period debates between social realism and more expressive forms, and which offer new potential today.