In Forms of Being, Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit argue that, more than any other art form, cinema encourages us to think about the importance of individuality. The film star, they argue, is nearly always presented as a sharply individualised presence; furthermore, ‘it remains commonplace of film criticism to praise works that give us unforgettable individual characters, and to condemn those that fail to do so.’ One could also add that cinema satisfies a particular wish for recognition and identification that relies on the visible presence of an individual person on the screen. The cinematic experience uncannily reflects that crucial moment in the process of subject formation in which the child recognises its own image in the mirror, an image that constitutes the matrix of the first articulation of the ‘I’ of subjectivity. The question of subjectivity has also been crucial to the consolidation of cinema as an art form. In his 1948 essay, ‘The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: la caméra-stylo’, Alexandre Astruc famously salutes the emergence of a new cinema exemplified by the films of Orson Welles, Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu: 1939) and Robert Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945). Astruc sees in the work of these directors the potential for cinema to become ‘an expressive form’. By this, Astruc means the possibility for cinema to function like a distinct language articulating an internal vision, that of its central creative force. For Astruc and the critics of Les Cahiers du cinéma, who were inspired by his essay to promote la politique des auteurs, this central creative force was the director. In establishing the conditions for the emergence of the auteur film canon, the essay embraces the image of the ‘caméra-stylo’ (the camera-pen) as its guiding metaphor. Like the pen in the hands of the writer, Astruc sees the camera as the means by which a director could ‘write’ her/his thoughts on the screen. Astruc's ambition was to raise the cultural status of cinema. Taking the novel and painting as models, Astruc saw the possibility for cinema to become a self-reflective medium through which true artists could articulate their personal vision.