Theory of Film

The Redemption of Physical Reality
Suhrkamp | Insel

Theory of Film / Theorie des Films
The Redemption of Physical Reality
This book was originally published in America in 1960, and immediately assumed a position among the classic works of film theory by authors such as Béla Balázs, Rudolf Arnheim, and André Bazin. The book articulates a material aesthetics that tackles the content of film. Kracauer’s theory is founded on the assumption that film is in essence an expansion of photography, and thus bears an explicit affinity to the visible world. This entails a rejection of all films with...
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This book was originally published in America in 1960, and immediately assumed a position among the classic works of film theory by authors such as Béla Balázs, Rudolf Arnheim, and André Bazin. The book articulates a material aesthetics that tackles the content of film. Kracauer’s theory is founded on the assumption that film is in essence an expansion of photography, and thus bears an explicit affinity to the visible world. This entails a rejection of all films with a ›theatrical‹ story or with ›artistic‹ or ideological ambitions. As such, films that are faithful to the medium do not just register physical reality, the also unveil and ›redeem‹ it, opening our gaze to minor details, to the aleatory, the unintended, and the indeterminate.
2019, 464 pages
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Persons

Siegfried Kracauer, born in Frankfurt/Main on February 8, 1889, was an architect, sociologist, cultural critic and film theorist. He is considered one of the most important feature writers of the Weimar Republic and was the leading feuilleton editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung from 1930 to 1933. With Die Angestellten (1930), Kracauer published the first empirical-sociologcal study in Germany. He is also considered one of the founders of the sociology of film. In 1933, Kracauer and his wife fled to Paris and then, after the start of the war, to New York in 1941, where he died from pneumonia on November 26, 1966. Apart from Die Angestellten, Kracauer's most important works include Theorie des Films (1960), the collection of essays Von...

Siegfried Kracauer, born in Frankfurt/Main on February 8, 1889, was an architect, sociologist, cultural critic and film theorist. He is considered...


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

The Mass Ornament
Year of Publication: 2021
Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 2021
Kracauer described his 1929 study on the salaried masses as an exploration of the »exoticism of the everyday, more adventurous than a film journey to Africa«, and this description could...
Rights sold to:

Russia (Ad Marginem), Italy (Cue Press), Norway (Bokvennen), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Hosei University Press), Slovenia (*cf.), Turkey (Metis)

Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Gedisa), Brazilian Portuguese (Cosac & Naify), France (Éditions La Découverte), Czech Republic (Academia Nakladatelství), Romania (Editura TACT)

Ginster
Year of Publication: 2019
Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 2019
A novel with a »shirker« as the hero: Ginster, a gifted architect from Frankfurt, is 25 when the First World War breaks out. He views the patriotic enthusiasm of his contemporaries with...
Rights sold to:

France (Klincksieck/Les Belles Lettres)

Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Editorial Las cuarenta), Slovenia (Mladinska knjiga)
The Detective Novel
Year of Publication: 2010
Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 2010
Written in 1925, in this work, Siegfried Kracauer shows again why he was such a unique writer and cultural theorist. He takes the much-maligned genre of the detective novel and subjects it to a...
Rights sold to:

Chinese simplex (Peking University Press), France (Les Belles Lettres), Korea (Ghil), Bulgaria (Agata-A), Turkey (Metis)

Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Editorial Paidós), Brazilian Portuguese (Cosac & Naify), Greece (Scripta)

Correspondence 1923-1966
Year of Publication: 2008
Among the great letter exchanges, the one between Theodor W. Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer is certainly the most intimate.


The resonance of a passionate friendship which connected both parties...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Cuarenta), France (Bord De L'Eau)

From Caligari to Hitler
Year of Publication: 1947
Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 1947

»First published in 1947, From Caligari to Hitler remains an undisputed landmark study of the rich cinematic history of the Weimar Republic. Prominent film critic Siegfried Kracauer...

Rights sold to:

English world rights (Princeton UP), Spanish world rights (Paidós), Russia (Ad Marginem), France (Klincksieck), Korea (Saemulgyul), Czech Republic (Academia), Bulgaria (Funtasy)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai Century), Poland (Slowo), Turkey (Basim Yayim)

The Salaried Masses
Year of Publication: 1930
Siegfried KracauerYear of Publication: 1930
Kracauer‘s The Salaried Masses is a classic of analytical-documentary literature that hasn’t lost any of its topicality since its first publication in 1930.

»First published in...
Rights sold to:

Spanish world rights (Gedisa), France (Les Belles Lettres), Italy (Meltemi), Korea (Ghil), Bulgaria (Agata)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (Peking UP), Russia (Kabinetnyj yčenyj), Portuguese rights (Antigona), Romania (Tact), Croatia (Sandorf & Mizantrop), Slovenia (CF)

English edition available from Verso


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