In this chapter, I situate Bazin's studies on film and painting within a postwar endeavor to renew artistic forms and to revive their social implication, which crystallizes in an encounter with the French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel and Swiss biologist Adolphe Portmann . From there on, I pinpoint certain specifically cinematographic aspects, both on film and in painting, to support Bazin's notion of a 'myth of total cinema'.