of the profilmic (what is in front of the camera) and the mechanical and the filmmaker. It is above all a defamiliarization of the spectator with what appears on screen. It is a property that cannot be found in "reality" itself, a camera that is simply switched on does not record it, and a filmmaker cannot simply point it out. As Aitken summarizes, "…fully realized photogénie could only be manifested when its latent power was employed to express the vision of the film-maker, so that the inherent poetry of the cinema could be harnessed, and developed in a revelatory manner by the auteur" 8. However, the narrative avant-garde lacked a theoretical and philosophical base upon which these notions rest and thus the concept of photogénie is always on the edge of an inexplicable mysticism that many critics cannot accept. Notes 1. Bordwell, David. French Impressionist Cinema. New York: Arno Press, 1980. 2. Abel, Richard. French Cinema: The First Wave 1915–1929. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984. 3. Andrew, Dudley. Mists of Regret. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995. 4. Bordwell, Appendix B pp. 270–292. 5. Aitken, Ian. European Film Theory and Criticism: A Critical Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 2001. p. 82. 6. Abel p. 292-294 7. Bordwell p. 133 8. Aitken p. 82 References External links Cinema of France Movements in cinema