Early in 2024, the film community lost one of its most influential figures. David Bordwell, the Jacques Ledoux Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, passed away on February 29, 2024, at the age of 76 after a lengthy illness. In the months since, Communication Arts faculty and alumni have shared their fondest memories of Bordwell and reflected on the momentous number of lessons they still carry with them today.
Bordwell published more than 20 influential books throughout his career, many of which were co-authored with Kristin Thompson, his partner and Honorary Associate Fellow in Communication Arts. “Film Art: An Introduction and Film History: An Introduction, continue to be revised and updated decades after their initial publications. For more advanced students, his extensive writings are models of how research and publication should be done,” Thompson said.
Bordwell’s research was extraordinarily vast and encompassed topics such as Hong Kong cinema, precise analyses of individual films, the craft practices and stylistic norms of classical Hollywood cinema, and the work of individual directors, including Ozu, Feuillade, Mizoguchi, among many others.
Vance Kepley, Professor Emeritus of Film Studies, who was a student of Bordwell and later became chair of the Communication Arts department, pointed to both the sophistication and accessibility of Bordwell’s writings. “His elegant prose style broadened his audience and made his ideas accessible. He wrote with clarity, precision, and generous doses of humor. Specialists and nonspecialists, academics and film buffs, could all enjoy reading his work,” Kepley said.
These works have likely done more to shape film studies than contributions from any other scholar. The techniques he presented for understanding film history and aesthetics have defined film studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and will continue to be central to programs across the globe.
Bordwell was critical to the growth of the film studies program in Communication Arts during his early professional years, arriving at a time in the 1970s when scholarly attention to cinema was relatively new and infrequent. Many of his students have become major figures in film studies, and some have dedicated decades to the discipline as faculty in Communication Arts, passing down lessons they learned over the years of working with him.
Jeff Smith, Professor of Film in Communication Arts and former Bordwell student, still has binders overflowing with 35mm film strips that Bordwell captured to present as slideshows in his lectures. “David was a big believer in the value of showing real images to illustrate the concepts that he was talking about,” Smith said.
Kelley Conway, another Professor of Film in Communication Arts, watched how Bordwell mentored graduate students over the years and continually aims to embody his successful approach. She said, “he had very high expectations for students, and yet, he was generous and wanted to help them become the best scholars they could be.”
After retiring in 2004, David Bordwell returned frequently to the Communication Arts curriculum. Zachary Zahos, a 2024 Ph.D. graduate who took Bordwell’s last seminar on poetics in 2020, still refers to his notes from the seminar and treasures the knowledge gained from the late scholar. Zahos joined the program largely because of David Bordwell’s legacy. “The name recognition alone opens doors to initiate conversations with people in the field. To say that you worked under him is an incredible honor,” he said.
One of the many things that made Bordwell so special was his ability to inspire people to explore their own research paths. “Through his teaching and writing, he didn’t simply inspire film scholars to mimic him by writing, say, a second book on Ozu or on classical Hollywood style and narrative. Students took inspiration from him and his approach to writing film history to pose their own research questions and cultivate fresh areas of inquiry,” said Conway.
The generations of students who took a course with Bordwell have gone on to impact both higher education and the media industry. His legacy is carried with each Communication Arts alumnus who continues to use the tools he provided to transform film studies. Bordwell will shape the way we experience film for generations to come.