Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality by Siegfried Kracauer

Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality Reviews

• 
  Blair

  I personally feel that this is the bridge between the early onslaught of Nazi propagandism and the regime that followed. Kracauer is a visionary. His sense for where film belonged among popular culture is very valuable for understanding what happened during wartime Germany.
• 
  Tim Pendry

  
  Kracauer's quasi-philosophical investigation of the meaning of cinema was published almost at the half way mark (1960) between the age of Melies and Lumiere and that of the MCU Universe and Bullet Train.
  
  Naturally it suffers from looking back over seventy years without benefit of the subsequent sixty. Cinema morphs with technology in a way that does not apply to Literature. This matters a great deal. Nevertheless the book still stands as a relatively early attempt to 'understand' Film.
  
  Kracauer's core thesis (although the book is also valuable for many specific insights) is that cinema is closely linked to physical reality although I would dispute the thesis myself. This is also where he is at his most obscure.
  
  It is the insights that require our attention because they do what good philosophy should do - not allow us to close the book having found some secret about reality but rather driving us to question further and develop our own answers.
  
  For example, he refers to the universality of film - how an audience in (say) New York can 'see' persons and events in Tokyo or Bombay. This raises interesting questions about the role of film in constructing global culture and the role of propaganda in the struggle to control the planet.
  
  He usefully makes clear the line that separates the cinematic from the theatrical and literary. Although we may enjoy a film version of Shaw or Austen, such a film version cannot be called cinematic unless it is cinematic, making use of the unique character of the medium.
  
  Then there is the difference between stage acting (projection in real space and time to an audience in position and busy suspending disbelief through the magic of words) and film acting where the camera is said to 'love' the actor. The audience identifies with fluid movement and small gestures.
  
  Watch Lilian Gish as a nineteen year old in her first film ('An Unseen Enemy', 1912) and you see the very origins of the concept of 'star'. She shines. We do not suspend belief when we watch a film, we believe something entirely new in an oneiric experience.
  
  This might be why the surrealists played so assiduously with film but Kracauer has another solid insight for us - that extending Art into film is not cinematic, it is just the use of another medium for the sake of Art.
  
  He deals with experimental film (and its obverse, documentary) at length. He dismisses much of it as uncinematic although I would suggest that experiments can become profoundly cinematic in the hands of Rene Clair, Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger or Curtis Harrington.
  
  If the book has a fault (perhaps a forgivable one in the light of the high seriousness of mid-twentieth century intellectual life) it is that Kracauer has a tendency to put cinema into far too tight a strait-jacket, to move towards the 'canonical' thinking that might ossify an art.
  
  It never gets that bad both because Kracauer does not become overly prescriptive and because we know now that cinema would continue to develop along lines that Kracauer could not possibly have anticipated - the French New Wave, Tarantino, CGI, whatever.
  
  If he does show a sense of disapproval, it perhaps appears in his resistance to the leaching of Art into cinema. He emphasises the materiality of cinema and the fact that it cannot reproduce concept and thought processes as the novel has done.
  
  Instinctively this is right as we have all seen a favourite book mangled by film makers, a great film based on a book looking less impressive after reading the novel, great films made from very bad books and films strangled into dullness by verbiage thanks to literary scriptwriters.
  
  However, I kept finding myself disputing his thesis of materiality which seemed to depend a great deal on his constant references back to the then-fashionable Italian Neo-Realists and to a clear prejudice in favour of the documentary.
  
  First, film's oneiric quality (which he very much acknowledges) does not require the dream to be cast in surrealist terms but allows the film itself to be the dream. This capacity for becoming the dream has been enhanced in recent decades by new technologies such as CGI and in animation.
  
  Second, the alleged material reality in the cinematic (as in the photographic) is illusory since the selection of images means the de-selection of everything not included in the presentation of reality and the abandonment of all the other senses and personal movement that we use to navigate reality.
  
  When we live in the world, we select but from a much wider range of possible sensory choices. We create our own reality from immediate material reality. In cinema and photography, someone creates a limited reality for us to lose ourselves in - a willing restriction of choice.
  
  This focusing of perception on sound and vision without smell, touch, taste or prioperception or the ability to walk away (to sit 'entranced') means that the link to material reality is like that we have in dreams - it seems real while we are in the state of entrancement.
  
  Most of us will have had the sensation of leaving a cinema (the television screen or tablet is less able to do this) and found that the film has taken a while to leave us, that it leaches into reality much like the experience of waking from a particularly intense dream and still half-thinking we are in it.
  
  Film 'uses' material reality but is not material reality other than the technology required to get the image into our eyes and the sound into our ears. It merely purports to be material reality which is why we should continue to distrust news footage and documentaries. They are selective artefacts.
  
  The implications of film as vector for dream-like acceptance of invented realities and its effect on human culture has still barely been analysed, perhaps because much of the relevant intelligentsia is closely involved in its production and the recipients do not care.
  
  Reading Kracauer and earlier theorists, you become increasingly aware that humanity has become increasingly inoculated to the 'magic' of film as merely film and has learned to lose itself into the dramatic and fantastic yet increasingly to become doubtful of the allegedly factual.
  
  Film is unique whether as news footage or 'cinema' because nothing but film presents us with an apparent reality in movement away from the source of that reality. There is, of course, recorded music and words where we have to fill in any imagery ourselves but photography is still.
  
  Theatre and opera or masque unless filmed might be 'oneiric' with suspension of disbelief but it is bound by physicality in itself and it requires a ritual more complex than buying a ticket and sitting in a dark room where you can walk in and out any time you want. At home, there is no ritual.
  
  It has also become the 'art' that can express the lives of the marginal and the different to the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time alongside the mass news media. Without either, high art expressions of meaning are highly restricted in their reach to elites.
  
  Which raises interesting questions about propaganda which Kracauer seems not to grasp or want to grasp. Exactly how much is film an intrinsically exploitative or intrinsically liberatory medium? The skills of the film maker are, in themselves, no more ethically grounded than the atomic scientist's.
  
  This, of course, applies to all arts and literature. It takes us back to the theatrical where Kracauer points out Olivier's genius in thinking cinematically in order to enfold his theatrical versions of Hamlet and Henry V and yet these are essentially theatrical not cinematic experiences.
  
  The film musical becomes a type case in the intrinsic creative absurdity of the cinematic, episodes of realism along usually hackneyed lines being interposed episodically (episodes are seen by Kracauer as essential to film story-telling) with 'numbers' being actually cinematic.
  
  He has an extensive section on the use of sound in cinema which is still useful if perhaps one of the more obscurely philosophical sections. And, yes, the book can be a dry read at times so that the insights are fought hard for if worthwhile.
  
  Overall one gets the sense of an intellectual trying to (at least partly) academicize something almost too slippery ever to be analysed in such terms. The thinking is sound but you get the impression that, at any moment, a new 'fact' (a new film) might unravel any proposition he might make.
  
  Cinema is an art but not part of Art. It works because it follows its own material nature (the underpinning technology) and creates a bond between its producer and its audience based on a shared understanding about the material reality that the producer uses to reach the audience.
  
  The 'chase' is an example. The 'chase' is cinematic since no other art form can present rapid movement over time and space. It may be a spool of film or pixels 'in reality' but, in the author's time, the chase was only possible by putting a camera on a vehicle in the real world and editing.
  
  Sixty years on, the 'chase' is still cinematic but it is manufactured in the editing suite from a combination of live action (often actors with a green screen) and CGI. Bullet Train is one long invention of material reality through the digital. Kracauer's material reality is no longer central.
  
  What we are probably seeing in this book is an early attempt to create a tradition, a route to a canon, at a time when film needed to be presented as an art to be respectable (rather than as a global business sensitive to popular culture).
  
  To a great extent, this does take place - the Nouvelle Vague needed Hitchcock to feel real, Tarantino needed the Hollywood of the 1960s and 1970s to create his 'ouevre' as an 'auteur' - but the 'art form' (like comic books) is vastly bigger than canonical thinking can now permit.
  
  Rather than an accepted 'tradition' (which was still conceptually possible to imagine in 1960), cinema is now a huge and growing pool of eclectic items from which each generation of film-makers can pick and choose whatever will 'sell' as bridge between their creativity and the public. Times change.
  
  
  
• 
  Victor Morosoff

  J’adhère au parti-pris de Krakauer (le cinéma comme art réaliste par excellence) non pas par conviction, mais par goût. C’est là la faute principale de cet ouvrage : le fait qu’elle repose (ou semble reposer) sur une argumentation personnelle et somme toute subjective, et non sur un avis objectif. Cela dit, beaucoup de ses chapitres peuvent facilement être validés. Mais pas tous. 3,2/5
• 
  Rebecca Timberlake

  Yet another book for my film class, so I only read about 2/3, but it was good. It was dense at times, and I had to re-read some things just to make sure I understood, but overall I liked the writing style.
• 
  Chaton

  
  
  出版社: 江苏教育出版社
  出版年: 2006-6
  译者: 邵牧君
  页数: 470
  
  
  1、
  我认为,电影和悲剧是互不相容的。这个提法是从我的基本立论中直接引申出来的，而它在一个形式美学的研究家心目中则是荒唐透顶的。如果电影是一个照相的手段，它必须以广阔的外在世界为重心——这个无边无际的世界和悲剧所规定的有限的、整齐有序的世界几乎没有共同之处。在悲剧的世界里,命运排斥了偶然性,人与人之间的相互影响构成注意的全部中心，但电影的世界则是一系列偶然的事件,既牵涉到人，也牵涉到无生命的物体。这种形象之流不可能引起悲，悲完全是一种在摄影机面前的现实中找不到对应物的精神经验.....
  2、
  因此,实验电影的制作者,不管他们所偏爱的是构成节奏的抽象物,抑或内心现实的超现实主义的表现,他们对待电影的态度看来都是一心想把它跟未经加工的自然——电影手段的特有威力的泉源一隔离开来。他们的造型的要求促使他们去追求具有现代绘画或文学的精神的成果——这种对独立的创造的追求使他们不爱关心摄影机的探索能力，对整个现实不感到好奇。他们把电影从故事情节的桎梏下解放出来之后,又把它置于传统艺术的统治之下。纽约创造性电影基金会在1957年印发的一份传单中写道:“请协助电影作为一种美术形式发展....”但是,��术家的自由对电影导演则是一种约束。然而,我们丝毫没有忘记,先锋派在电影语言、节奏的剪辑和冉现近乎无意识的过程等方面所作的种种实验,曾给整个电影带来很大的益处。我们也不应当忘记，许多先锋派艺术家一如布努艾尔——后来已转向现实义转向表现外部世界;再如���里斯·伊文思和卡瓦尔康蒂则已转向社会性的纪录电影。①
  ①勃鲁纽斯:《法国实验电影》一文,第102—05 页;乃特:《最生动的艺术》,第
  108—109页。
  3、
  在电影观众身上,自我，作为思想和决断力的主要源泉,放弃了它的控制能力。这就构成他们和戏剧观众之间的-一个显见的不同之处。欧洲的观察家和批评家曾一再指出这一点。“在剧场里,”一个敏于感受的法国妇女有一次告诉瓦龙说,“我总是我,而在电影院里,我就和所有的人和物都融化在一起了。”②瓦龙对她所说的那个融化过程细细研究了一番:“如果说电影造成了这种效果的话,那是因为我让自己和电影形象合而为一,因为我多多少少是沉醉在银幕上正在展开的东西之中了。我不再是自己生活的主人,我进人了放映在我面前的影片。”
  ②巴尔耶弗尔在《总体电影:电影的未来形式》中(第68页)说过类似的话:“在剧场里,观众看演出。在电影院里,观众参加演出。”另参见里卡特著《戏剧和电影:观众心理学》,特别是该书第19、20、57页。里卡特详细地论述了舞台和银幕的不同心理效果,把它们归纳成两张花哨的图表。这本小书是许多锐利的和古怪的观点的一次奇妙的混合。一方面,里卡特充分地承认了电影对感官的独特的冲击力;在另一方面,他却厌弃它,因为它据说不能给头脑“增添财富”(第57页)。这个判决显然是跟他对戏剧和传统文化的那种极其忠诚的态度相一致的。
  4、
  可是,也应当为这出匪夷所思的歌舞剧说几句好话。尽管它被浮夸的处理和风格上那种令人恼火的紊乱丧尽了元气,它毕竟还是一次突破了舞台限制的演出,并且也有若干诱人的地方——特别是当莫拉·希尔在红色的空间漂浮而过的那一瞬间。这毫无疑问是电影。但这是违背了自身目的的电影,因为它屈从于歌剧的价值和意义。整个歌舞剧是以加浓奥芬巴赫的歌剧的魔力为目的的。鲍威尔和普勒斯布格尔拋开了作为一种捕捉现实生活的手段的电影,然后又把它拣回来,借以展开一幅本质上是属于舞台性质的、虽然在剧院里是无法演出的图景。他们抛弃了所有那些新鲜的卢米埃尔式的东西,倒退到梅里爱式的舞台化的神话片水平。他们的假想目标是创造一部以歌剧为核心的总体艺术作品一和惠弗尔的关于电影进人艺术王国的昏梦相呼应的一部电影作品。
  然而,电影对那些抛弃它的人进行了报复。正跟迪斯尼在《幻想曲》里的动画一样,这些浮笔的画面使���作为它们的养料来源的音乐丧失了效果。歌剧萎缩掉了,剩下的是一种寄生性质的演出场面,它叫人眼花缭乱,好让你动不了脑筋。它是奇迹般的摄影棚效果的产物,结果却排除了摄影机所能创造的一切奇迹。只要一片叶子的颤动便足以揭穿它那虚假的迷魂阵了。
  5、
  如果电影是照相术的产物,其中就必然也存在现实主义的倾向和造型的倾向。这两个倾向,在电影发明后便立即同时并存，这难道是偶然的么?双方都各趋极端,使尽浑身解数仿佛想一下子就指明电影表现的全部途径。它们的始祖是卢米埃尔(一个严格的现实主义者)和梅里爱(一个自由发挥艺术想象的人)。他们拍摄的影片可以说是体现了黑格尔式的正题与反题。②
  ②凯温在《 电影概念的辩证法》(载《电影观众心理学国际评论》1947年7—8月号和1948年10月号)一文中,以一种有点生硬的方式把黑格尔的辩证法原理套用到电影的演进问题上去。他说，第一个辩证阶段是卢米埃尔对现实的复制,而它的反题是以梅里爱为代表的彻底的幻象(详见1947年7-8月号该刊74—78页)。同样,摩林在《电影或照相的人》一书中(第58页)也认为梅里爱的“绝对的不真实性”是卢米埃尔的“绝对的现实主义”的黑格尔式的反题。另参见萨杜尔著《电影艺术史》,第31页。
  6、
  因此,我们也许可以得出结论说,电影移开了观众对生活的核心部分的注意。这就是为什么瓦莱里要反对电影。他认为电影是一种“像机器般精确的对外部事物的记忆”。他责怪它不该诱使我们去模仿银幕上幻影人物的行为:模仿它们怎么微笑或杀人或坠人可见的沉思默想。“我看到的这些相互交杂、无聊但是多样的行动和情绪还能有什么意义呢?我不再对生活发生兴趣,因为生活已无非是依样画葫芦而已。我已经未卜先知了。”①按照瓦莱里的看法,由于电影描绘的是内心生活的外部表现，所以电影简直是强迫我们模仿外部表现而抛开内心生活。生活里只剩下表象和模仿,于是也就丧失了它的独特的价值。随之而来的必然结果便是枯燥无趣。②换言之,瓦莱里坚持认为,电影由于专门注意外部世界,结果就使我们不去注意心灵范围内的东西;它对物质材料的偏，爱妨碍了我们对精神现象的关心;内心生活，即心灵的生活，由于我们热衷于银幕上外部生活的形象而陷于窒息。顺便指出,他并不是参加到这类争论中来的唯--的一位作家。乔治·杜哈默尔也抱怨说,电影使他不再能独立思考,反而“用电影里的东西来代替他自己的思想"③。尼柯拉·查罗蒙特最近指责照相和电影使我们“完全从外部瞪着眼腈看世界”。或者,另如他所说的,“摄影机的眼睛给了我们那个离奇的东西:不受意识感染的世界”④。
  ①瓦莱里:《电影术》 ,见拉比埃编《电影的智慧》，第35页。
  ②尽管瓦莱里提出了这种结论,他对物质的生活流还是感受很敏锐的,例如他对阿
  姆斯特丹的街道和运河的令人生爱的描写便说明了这一一点。他同样也认识到,为求充分地把握可见的形式,就必须彻底抛开其含义(它们通常起识别形式的作用);为利用形式而利用形式的思想对他有相当的吸引力。参见瓦莱里著<从荷兰归来》,载《综艺二集》,第25一27页。
  ③本雅明 :《机械复制时代的艺术品》,原引,见《社会研究杂志》,1936年第5卷,第1
  期,第62页,原文见杜哈默尔著《未来生活场景》一书(巴黎,1930年)。
  ④查罗蒙特:《谈谈电影》， 载《代言》,1948年第4期。
• 
  Liedzeit Liedzeit

  Das kann man schon lesen, obwohl es ein wenig wie eine Eigenparodie wirkt. Soziologisch verbrämtes Gewäsch. Aber wenigstens spürt man, dass der Mann den Film (natürlich nur sw, erstaunlicherweise lässt er Ton gelten) liebte, und darum wollen wir das gern durchgehen lassen. 5/10
• 
  WryPriest

  'Theory of Film' is an ambitious early foundational work on its title's topical field(s) of study. This 1960 book is Siegfried Kracauer's final completed work prior to his passing in 1967, only a short time before its recognition in film studies scholarship and curriculums the following decade. While this volume is imperfect as a work by itself, its insights and perspectives come from an author who is himself a curious, intelligent, amusingly (almost dourly) dry, and naturally eccentric character.
  
  Here are sophisticated, distinguishing, even important ideas (for example, the opening chapter on photography) along with a few portions which are irrelevant by the time the book gets its full acceptance. It's palpable in the later sections, when his political conclusions or definitions of the place of film feel very specifically affected by his political and cultural observations as a young journalist and writer throughout the chaos of the Weimar Republic and the emerged full nihilism of National Socialism.
  
  Kracauer has another book on cinema, a 1942 analysis of early 20th century German film, 'From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological Study of the German Film,' written immediately upon safely escaping to the USA from occupied France. That earlier one is methodically consistent and "indispensable" and as such is accorded consistent accolades. It was also the product of necessity, American appeal, and is a summation of the chapters of his life from his education through his early career. But what remains worthwhile in 'Theory of Film' feels alive and contemporary, and Kracauer is inspiring yet unlike the circles of his peers and his pseudo-alignments (e.g. Critical Theory), someone who remains outside the stereotypical categorizations of early 20th century intellectual movements.
  
  (Note: a number of Kracauer's earlier books were written in German and subsequently translated by others, but Kracauer writes this one's English edition himself.)
• 
  Miikka

  Outdated
• 
  Chuck Williamson

  Fundamental.