The promise of cinema : : German film theory, 1907-1933 / / edited by Anton Kaes, Nicholas Baer, Michael Cowan.

• Superior document: Weimar and now: German cultural criticism ; 49
• TeilnehmendeR: Kaes, Anton,; Baer, Nicholas, 1985-; Cowan, Michael J., 1971-
• Place / Publishing House: Oakland, California : : University of California Press,, [2016]; 2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Weimar and now ; 49.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (701 pages)

"Rich in implications for our present era of media change, The Promise of Cinema offers a compelling new vision of film theory. The volume conceives of "theory" not as a fixed body of canonical texts, but as a dynamic set of reflections on the very idea of cinema and the possibilities once associated with it. Unearthing more than 275 early-twentieth-century German texts, this ground-breaking documentation leads readers into a world that was striving to assimilate modernity's most powerful new medium. We encounter lesser-known essays by Bela Balazs, Walter Benjamin, and Siegfried Kracauer alongside interventions from the realms of aesthetics, education, industry, politics, science, and technology. The book also features programmatic writings from the Weimar avant-garde and from directors such as Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau. Nearly all documents appear in English for the first time; each is meticulously introduced and annotated. The most comprehensive collection of German writings on film published to date, The Promise of Cinema is an essential resource for students and scholars of film and media, critical theory, and European culture and history"--Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

The Kientopp (1907) / Hanns Heinz Ewers -- Cinematographic theater (1909) / Max Brod -- On living photography and the film drama (1909) / Gustav Melcher -- A new task for the cinema (1909) / Kurt Weisse -- New terrain for cinematographic theaters (1909) / Anon. -- The career of the cinematograph (1910) / Anon. -- The cinematograph (1911) / Karl Hans Strobl -- On the psychology of the cinematograph (1911) / Ph. Sommer -- Theater and cinematograph (1911) / Hermann Kienzl -- The secret of the cinema (1912) / Adolf Sellmann -- Sports on film (1912) / Arno Arndt -- Thrills in film drama and elsewhere (1912-1913) / Carl Forch -- Cinema (1912-1913) / Lou Andreas-Salome -- The Kintopp as educator: an apology (1913) / Walter Hasenclever -- Cinema and visual pleasure (1913) / Walter Serner -- Illusions and hallucinations during cinematographic projections (1914) / Albert Hellwig -- The cinematograph in the service of ethnology (1907) / Anon. -- The cinematograph as modern newspaper (1913-1914) / O.Th. Stein -- Cinema and geography: introduction (1914) / Hermann Hafker -- The film drama (1920) / Yvan Goll -- Africa and film (1922) / Hans Schomburgk -- The value of the adventure film (1923) / Franc Cornel -- Reel consciousness (1925) / Bela Balazs -- Exotic journeys with a camera (1928) / Colin Ross -- Lunar flight in film (1929) / Anon. -- A new India film: a throw of dice (1929) / Lotte H. Eisner -- Pictures-pictures (1929) / Erich Burger -- The panic of reality (1930) / Alfred Polgar - The case of Dr. Franck (1931) / Bela Balazs -- The weekly newsreel (1931) / Siegfried Kracauer -- Cinematographic archives (1908) / Ludwig Brauner -- In the cinematographic theater (1910) / Berthold Viertel -- Cinematograph and epistemology (1911) / Eduard B?umer -- Proposal for the establishment of an archive for cinema-films (1912) / Franz Goerke -- Mechanized immortality (1912) / J. Landau -- Why?-This is why! (1913) / Heinrich Lautensack -- The film archive of the great general staff (1915) / E.W. -- Slow motion (1917) / Hans Lehmann -- The transcendence of the film image (1920) / Friedrich Sieburg -- Film as historian (1921) / August Wolf -- Will to style in film (1924) / Fritz Lang -- Mountains, clouds, people (1925) / Siegfried Kracauer -- The uncovered grave (1925) / Joseph Roth -- On the question of a national film archive (1926) / Fritz Schimmer -- Documentary and artistic film (1929) / Albrecht Viktor Blum -- Where is the German sound film archive? (1931) / Bela Balazs -- Film dramas and film mimes (1910) / Walter Turszinsky -- Theater, pantomime, and cinema (1916) / Friedrich Freksa -- Film and theater (1919) / Carl Hauptmann -- Mimic expression in film (1922) / Oskar Diehl -- The eroticism of Asta Neilsen (1923) / Bela Balazs -- The magic of the body (1923) / Friedrich Sieburg -- The nude body on film (1925) / Max Osborn -- The educational values of film art (1925) / Bela Balazs -- How I came to film...(1926) / Leni Riefenstahl -- The Charleston in one thousand steps (1927) / Anon. -- On the psychomechanics of the spectator (1927) / Leo Witlin -- Film and dance belong together (1928) / Lotte H. Eisner and Rudolf von Laban -- The art of mimic expression in film (1929) / Fritz Lang -- Miming and speaking (1930) / Emil Jannings -- Greta Garbo: a study (1933) / Siegfried Kracauer -- Illusion in the cinematographic theater (1907) / Fred Hood -- Theater of the little people (1909) / Alfred Doblin -- The education of moviegoers into a theater public (1910) / Arthur Mellini -- The movie girl (1911) / Anon. -- Various thoughts on the movie theater interior (1912) / Anon. -- The cinema (1913) / Victor Noack -- On the sociology of cinema (1914) / Emilie Altenloh -- From Berlin North and thereabouts-In the movie houses of Berlin West (1919) / Resi Langer -- Cinema (1920) / Milena Jesenska -- Erotic films (1920) / Kurt Tucholsky -- Film advertising and the advertising film (1920) / Herbert Tannenbaum -- The spectator in cinema (1921) / August Wolf -- Ufa Palace (1925) / Kurt Pinthus -- The sociological foundations of the cinema industry (1926) / Karl Demeter -- The movie theater as gathering place (1926) / Rudolf Harms -- The cinema on M?nzstrasse (1932) / Siegfried Kracauer -- Prologue before the film (1912-13) / Egon Friedell -- The autorenfilm and its assessment (1913) / Anon.

The cinema ballad (1913) / Ulrich Rauscher -- Quo vadis, cinema? (1913) / Kurt Pinthus -- The student of Prague (1913) / Anon. -- The call for art (1913) / Hermann Hafker -- Problems of the film drama (1913-14) / Herbert Tannenbaum -- The new illusion (11913-14) / Will Scheller -- The photoplay (1914) / Kurt Pinthus -- The onlookers of life in the cinema (1914-15) / Malwine Rennert -- On the artistic possibilities of the motion picture (1917) / Paul Wegener -- We lack film poetry (1920) / Ernst Lubitsch -- Kitsch-Sensation-Culture and film (1924) / Friz Lang -- Cinematograph and schoolchildren (1909) / Georg Kleib?mer -- Cinema as educator (1909) / Franz Pfemfert -- Trash films (1911) / Albert Hellwig -- The dangers of the cinema (1911-12) / Robert Gaupp -- The cinematograph from an ethical and aesthetic viewpoint (1912) / Konrad Lange -- The sexual danger in the cinema (1912) / Ike Spier -- Against a cinema that makes women stupid (1912-13) / P. Max Grempe -- Against a cinema that makes women stupid: a response (1912-13) / Roland -- The cinema's damaging effects on health (1913) / Naldo Felke -- Today's cinematograph: a public menace (1913) / Karl Brunner -- Cinematic mankind (1916) / Richard Gutmann -- Homosexuality and Jewishness (1919) / Walther Friedmann -- Homo cinematicus (1919) / Wilhelm Stapel -- Cinema censorship (1920) / Kurt Tucholsky -- The motion picture and the state (1924) / Albert Hellwig -- Cinema (1931) / Aurel Wolfram -- Film Bolshevism (1932) / Fritz Olimsky -- The German Kaiser in film (1912) / Paul Klebinder -- Cinematograph and crowd psychology (1912) / Hermann Duenschmann -- War and cinema (1914) / Der Kinematograph -- The cinematograph as shooting gallery (1914) / Anon. -- Cinema and the educated class: a foreword (1914) / Hermann Hafker -- The tasks of cinematography in this war (1914) / Hermann Hafker -- The benefits of war for the cinema (1914) / Edgar K?ltsch -- Made in Germany (1916) / Karl Kraus -- State and cinema (1916) / Anon. -- Art and cinema in war (1916) / Johannes Gaulke -- Film propaganda for German affairs abroad (1917) / Gustav Stresemann -- The Ludendorff letter (1917) / Erich Ludendorff -- The triumph of film (1917) / Joseph Max Jacobi -- Film as a means of agistation (1919) / Rudolf Genenncher -- War films (1927) / Kurt Tucholsky -- Film in the new Germany (1928) / Film-Kurier -- All quiet on the western front (1930) / Seigfried Kracauer -- Against the ban on the Remarque film (1931) / Kurt Tucholsky -- American cinema (1920) / Claire Goll -- The significance of conglomerates in the film industry (1920) / Erich Pommer -- The significance of film for international understanding (1921) / Valentin -- The style of the export film (1922) / Joe May -- German cinema (1922) / Hans Siemsen -- Film-America and us (1922) / Georg Jacoby -- Film internationality (1924) / Ernst Lubitsch -- Is film national or international? (1924) / Georg Otto Stindt -- The twilight of film? (1926) / Axel Eggebrecht -- The restructuring of Ufa (1927) / Anon. -- Film German and Film America (1928) / Carl Laemmle -- The first one back from Hollywood (1929) / Billie Wilder -- Film statistics (1930) / Alexander Jason -- Done with Hollywood (1931) / A.K. -- Film-Europe, a fact! (1931) / Anon. -- Internationality through the version systems (1931) / Anon. -- The international talking film (1932) / Erich Pommer -- The diva (1919) / Henny Porten -- Henny Porten for president (1921) / Kurt Pinthus -- Impression of a naif (1923) / Robert Musil -- Only stars! (1926) / Bela Balazs -- The automobile in film (1926) / Vicky Baum -- Vienna is filming! (1926) / Anon. -- Why we love film (1926) / Willy Haas -- Film education (1928) / Hugo -- What is film illusion? (1928) / K.W. -- The representative of a generation (1928) / Hans Feld, Anita Berber -- To an unknown woman (1930) / Marlene Dietrich -- Love on film (1930) / Max Brod and Rudolf Thomas -- All about film stars (1931) / Siegfried Kracauer -- Destitution and distraction (1931) / Siegfried Kracauer -- In the empire of film (1931) / Anon. -- The revolutionary film (1922) / Bela Balazs -- The Klieg lights stay on (1926) / Siegfried Kracauer -- Potemkin and tendentious art (1927) / Oscar A.H. Schmitz -- Reply to Oscar A.H. Scmitz (1927) / Walter Benjamin -- The new youth and film (1928) / Lotte H. Eisner -- Film und Volk: foreword (1928) / Franz Hollering -- Film works for us! (1928) / Bela Balazs -- Film and the people (1928) / Heinrich Mann -- Who will create the German revolutionary film? (1928) / Ernst Toller -- Mass-man in the cinema (1929) / Karl Ritter -- Film and propaganda (1929) / Willi M?nzenberg -- World film report (1929) / A.A. -- Individual and montage (1930) / Lupu Pick.

The threepenny lawsuit (1931) / Bertolt Brecht -- The banned Kuhle Wampe (1932) / Herbert Jhering -- Film and conviction (1933) / Georg Wilhelm Pabst -- Thoughts toward an aesthetic of the cinema (1911) / Georg Lukacs -- The effects of the film theater (1912) / Alfred A. Baeumler -- A substitute for dreams (1921) / Hugo von Hofmannsthal -- The ethical potential of film (1923) / Kurt Pinthus -- A film (1924) / Siegfried Kracauer -- Film image and prophetic speech (1925) / Siegfried Kracauer -- The public's attitude toward modern German literature (1926) / Adolf Behne -- Revue and film (1928) / Fritz Giese -- Chaplin in retrospect (1928) / Walter Benjamin -- Chaplin in old films (1930) / Siegfried Kracauer -- Kierkegaard prophesies Chaplin (1930) / Theodor W. Adorno -- Mickey Mouse (1931) / Walter Benjamin -- Painting and film (1931) / Ernst Kallai -- Fantasy by the meter (1931) / Rene Fulop-Miller -- The worker (1932) / Ernst Junger -- Expressionism and cinema (1916) / Bernhard Diebold -- The expressionist film (1919) / Gertrud David -- Expressionism in film (1920) / J.B. -- An "Expressionist" film (1920) / Ernst Angel -- If I only had the cinema! (1920) / Carlo Mierendorff -- The future of film (1921) / Robert Muller -- Expressionism in film (1922) / Robert Wiene -- An afterword to Caligari (1925) / Walter Reimann -- Limitations of the Expressionist film (1926) / Rudolf Kurtz -- The interpretation of dreams in film (1926) / Hanns Sachs -- The film of factuality (1927) / Robert Breuer -- Fantastic film (1929) / Henrik Galeen -- Painting with time (ca.1919) / Walter Ruttmann -- A new art: film's music for the eyes (1921) / Bernhard Diebold -- Basic principles of the art of movement (1921) / Hans Richter -- Film as a work of art (1921) / Adolf Behne -- The absolute film (1925) / Rudolf Arnheim -- Film at the Bauhaus: a rejoinder (1926) / Laszlo Moholy-Nagy -- How I made my Berlin film (1927) / Walter Ruttmann -- The "absolute" fashion (1928) / Walter Ruttmann -- Abstract film (1928) / Seigfried Kracauer -- The artist belongs to the industry! (1928) / Laszlo Moholy-Nagy -- Living shadows (1929) / Lotte Reiniger -- New means of filmmaking (1929) / Hans Richter -- The isolated artist (1929) / Walter Ruttmann -- Avant-garde in the realm of the possible (1929) / Hans Richter -- "Candid" cinematography (1929) / Anon. -- Avant-garde for the masses (1929) / Lotte H. Eisner -- The end of the avant-garde? (1930) / Alex Strasser -- Melody in the cinema, or immanent and transcendental music (1914) / Ernst Bloch -- The muteness of the film image (1920) / Oskar Kalbus -- Lighting design in film (1922) / Albin Grau -- Intertitles (1923) / Hans Pander -- The close-up (1924) / Bela Balazs -- My ideal screenplay (1924) / Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau -- Architecture in film (1924) / Paul Leni -- Film and fashion (1924) / Julie Elias -- The delirious camera (1925) / Guido Seeber -- Productive and reproductive film art (1926) / Bela Balazs -- Looking toward the future (1926) / Fritz Lang -- Behind my camera (1927) / Karl Freund -- Subjective movement (1927) / Lotar Holland -- Film and music (1928) / Giuseppe Becce -- Farewell to silent film (1930) / Bela Balazs.

Cinematography in the service of neurology and psychiatry (1910) / Hans Hennes - The cinematograph in biological and medical science (1911) / Osvaldo Polimanti -- The cultural mission of the cinematograph (1912) / Leonhard Birnbaum -- Cinema in the light of medicine (1913) / Der Kinematograph -- Film advertising (1913) / Julius Pinschewer -- Artistic film porgram (1920) / Bruno Taut -- Cinematography in the service of the police (1921) / Wilhelm von Ledebur -- Film advertising and advertising films (1921) / Arthur Lassally -- School and film (1924) / Edgar Beyfuss -- Industrial films (1924) / Ulrich Kayser -- Kulturfilm and cinema (1924) / Eugen R. Schlesinger -- The trick film (1927) / Dietrich W. Dreyer -- Film is promotion (1929) / Hans Curlis -- Advertising film and its psychological effects (1932) / Karl Nikolaus -- How singing pictures (sound pictures) are made (1908) / Anon. -- The acoustic film (1922) / Herbert Jhering -- Film and music (1928) / Heinrich Strobel -- Principles of the sound film (1928) / Walter Ruttmann -- Sound-image film (1928) / Seigfried Kracauer -- A conviction (1929) / Bela Balazs --The nature and value of sound film (1929) / Ernst Hugo Correll -- Reality of sound film (1929) / Georg Wilhelm Pabst -- Problems of the camera (1929) / Carl Hoffmann -- Possibilities for the use of music in sound film (1929) / Walter Gronostay -- Sound film friend and foe (1929-30) / Erwin Piscator -- A commentary on the crisis facing montage (1930) / Rudolf Arnheim -- Experiences in composing music for sound films (1930) / Edmund Meisel -- Only the transformed author can transform film (1930) / Alfred Doblin -- Problems in sound film design (1931) / Film-Kurier, Fritz Lang -- The conquest of the third dimension (1914) / Max Mack -- The prehistory of the bioskop (1916) / Max Skladanowsky -- Art and technology in film (1923) / Heinz Michaelis -- The color film (1923) / Bela Balazs -- The telefilm (1925) / S.E. Bastian -- Film and radio (1925) / Herbert Jhering -- Possibilities for absolute radio art (1925) / Kurt Weill -- My process (1926) / Eugen Schufftan -- Why we still do not have television (1929) / Arthur Korn -- The elements once again (1929) / Laszlo Moholy-Nagy -- The third dimension (1929) / Erich Grave -- Telecinema in the home (1929) / Ernst Steffen -- A glance into the future (1930) / Frank Warschauer -- The color film (1930) / H. Baer -- Radio-film (1932) / Rudolf Arnheim -- The future of Mickey Mouse (1932) / Bernhard Diebold -- On the border of yesterday (1932) / Siegfried Kracauer.