Film as Language: The Politics of Early Film Theory (1920-1960): The Case of Siegfried Kracauer as Emigre Intellectual

In: Journal of language and politics, Band 4, Heft 1, S. 161-168

Abstract

While conventional accounts of the history of film theory portray early theoretical writings as "naive", "unsystematic", & "impressionistic", this paper argues that, although there is a factual basis for this dismissive appraisal, such accounts thoroughly ignore the many contradictions that mark these writings. This paper focuses on a historically specific case, the film theory of Siegfried Kracauer, & relates the major contradictions in Kracauer's theory of film & his conception of "film as language" to a changing socio-cultural context. This case study serves to illustrate the fact that theoretical discourses, especially in their formative, pre-institutionalised stages, are open to a variety of ideological & political struggles. The specifics of early film theory also throw some light on the politics of discursive strategies establishing analogies (& difference) between "film" & "language" decades before the "structuralist turn" in film theory. References. Adapted from the source document.