  Rather than Sartre, it is Merleau-Ponty who gave the most lucid exposition of the evident link between cinema and existentialist philosophy in a conference at the National School of Cinema in Paris (1947b). Despite this insightful text, however, compared with the eminent philosophical status that is bestowed upon theatre, the novel, and painting for the late Merleau-Ponty, as the truly “metaphysical” art forms, cinema is remarkably absent from the most important existentialist writings in aesthetics.