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The Problem of Philosophy in Siegfried Kracauer's PECULIAR THEORY: THE PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY IN SIEGFRIED KRACAUER’S THEORY OF FILM Nicholas Alexander Warr Submitted for the qualification of PhD University Of East Anglia School of Film, Television and Media Studies 2013 © “This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that no quotation from the thesis, nor any information derived therefrom, may be published without the author’s prior, written consent”. ABSTRACT The republication of Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality by Siegfried Kracauer (1889 – 1966) in 1997 marked not just the highpoint of a period of renewed interest in his work, a period initiated by a series of events organized to mark the centenary of his birth, but also the limit of his scholarly influence. Though enthusiasm for his early sociological and cultural criticism written in Frankfurt and Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s continues to permeate research in numerous other disciplines within the humanities, his film theory continues to have little or no impact on the debates that currently define film studies. The reason for this, I argue, relates to the problematic role of philosophy in his film theory. Focusing primarily on Theory of Film, I examine in detail what makes Kracauer’s theory peculiar; peculiar in the sense that it belongs specifically to the film medium and peculiar in regard to the ambiguous philosophical claims that distinguish it from subsequent methods of film analysis. The contemporary image of Kracauer as a cultural philosopher, I argue, restricts how we read the relationship between film and philosophy in his work. I propose that from the perspective of the contemporary film-philosophy debate a critical notion of the cinematic can be restored to all facets of his work enabling a clearer understanding of how Kracauer comprehends the relationship between the filmmaker, spectator and film theorist. In turn, I conclude, this review of Kracauer’s cinematic approach as a democratised form of critical agency will benefit the understanding of philosophy and film theory as related forms of social practice. i CONTENTS ABSTRACT i TABLE OF CONTENTS ii LIST OF FIGURES v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii INTRODUCTION 1. FROM FILM THEORY TO CINEMATIC PHILOSOPHY 1 1.1 Introduction: The Problem of Philosophy in Kracauer’s Theory 1 1.2 Re-Opening the Cabinet of Dr. Kracauer: Why Return to Kracauer Now? 3 1.3 An Enemy of Philosophy? 5 1.4 Hybrid Perspectives and Research Questions 6 1.5 Chapter Structure and Content 8 PART ONE: FROM THEORIST TO PHILOSOPHER 2. PECULIAR ANACHRONISM: THE ISSUE OF RELEVANCE 17 2.1 Introduction 17 2.2 Pioneer or Obstacle: The Problem of Kracauer in Film Studies 17 2.3 Theory of Film as Philosophical Ruin: Kracauer’s Relevancy in the Digital Age 22 2.4 Historicising the Ontological Debate About Film 27 2.5 The Parallel and Alternative Histories of Film and Philosophy 29 2.6 The New and the Outmoded - The Forgotten Lesson of the Lumières 35 2.7 Conclusion 43 3. EXILE & REPATRIATION: KRACAUER’S REDEMPTION CYCYLE 45 3.1 Introduction 45 3.2 Biographical Sketch 45 3.3 Literature Review: Introduction 53 3.4 Karsten Witte and New German Critique 54 3.5 The Permanent Exile of Siegfried Kracauer 61 3.6 From Film Theory to Cinema Theory 70 3.7 Exile and the Broken Subject 80 3.8 The Two Kracauers Problem 90 3.9 Revealing the Hidden Legacies of Siegfried Kracauer 95 3.10 Conclusion 107 4. THE CONTEXT OF FILM-PHILOSOPHY 108 4.1 Introduction 108 4.2 The Provisional Nature of the Term Film-Philosophy 108 4.3 Wartenberg’s Tentative Typology of Cinematic Philosophy 109 4.4 Philosophy’s Intellectual Disenfranchisement of Film 120 4.5 The Non-philosophy of Cinema 123 4.6 Conclusion: Kracauer in the Context of Film-Philosophy 130 ii PART TWO: A CINEMATIC APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY 5. CINEMATIC SUBJECT RELATIONS: HOW FILM AFFECTS ITS THEORY 133 5.1 Introduction 133 5.2 Film and Material Dialectics 133 5.2 Relativised Subject Positions: Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante 140 5.3 The Peculiar Reality of Jean Vigo’s Zéro de conduite 146 5.4 Conclusion 152 6. FEEDBACK LOOPS: DEFINING CINEMATIC AGENCY 155 6.1 Introduction 155 6.2 A Dream That Makes You Dream 155 6.3 Film Spectatorship and the Two Directions of Dreaming 159 6.4 On the Mimetic Faculty of the Spectator 164 6.5 Complementarity and the Challenge of Content Analysis 169 6.6 The Emancipated Spectator 175 6.7 Conclusion 180 7. THE CINEMATIC AS SOCIAL PRACTICE 181 7.1 Introduction 181 7.2 Emancipated Communities 182 7.3 The Individual Spectator and the Mass Ornament 184 7.4 Kafka’s Model of a Non-Human Community 190 7.5 The Objective Status of Communal Appearance 192 7.6 Charlie Chaplin and The Coming Community 197 7.7 Conclusion 205 8. THEORY AND ITS CINEMATIC ILLUSTRATION 207 8.1 Introduction 207 8.2 The Manifold Shapes of Now: Kracauer’s Philosophy of Time 208 8.3 The Nature of Cinematic Narratives 216 8.4 Griffith’s Admirable Non-Solution 222 8.5 Saturated Images 227 8.6 The Wish to be a Red Indian: The Cinematic as Felt Reality 232 8.7 Conclusion 236 9. THE CRITICAL EXPERINCE OF CINEMATIC ANALOGIES 239 9.1 Introduction 239 9.2 Cinematic Thought-Images 240 9.3 The Unthinking Resonance Effect 247 9.4 Pferdegalopp: The Motif of the Galloping Horses 251 9.5 Identifying Cinematic Analogies 257 9.6 Rehabilitating Everyday Vision 268 9.7 Conclusion 273 iii 10. CONCLUSION: UTOPIA OF THE IN-BETWEEN 276 10.1 Introduction 276 10.2 Last Things Before the Last – Utopian Residues 277 10.3 Conclusion: The Truth about Sancho Panza - a Film-Philosophy Analogy) 284 FILMOGRAPHY 296 BIBLIOGRAPHY 299 iv LIST OF FIGURES Page No. Figure 1. Siegfried Kracauer (1930) 85 Cover image from Belke, Ingrid and Irina Renz, (eds.), “Siegfried Kracauer 1889-1966”, Marbacher Magazin (Deutsche Schillergesellschaft), No. 47 (1988). Figure 2. The oil derrick in Louisiana Story (1948) 137 Illustration 10 from Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality [1960] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Figure 3. Below deck of L’Atalante (1934) 145 Artificial Eye, 2004. Figure 4. The train compartment in Zéro de conduite (1933) 150 Artificial Eye, 2004. Figure 5. The stark reality of The Quiet One (1949) 157 Illustration 33 from Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality [1960] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Figure 6. The Tiller Girls in Berlin (1926) 186 Abb. 2. Jansen, Wolfgang, Glanzrevuen der zwanziger Jahre (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1987). Figure 7. The Opening Ceremony of the 1936 Berlin Olympics 186 Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone (Getty Images). Figure 8. “Ridiculous hats, overstuffed rooms”, Paris 1900 (1947) 199 Grapevine Video, 2009. v Figure 9. Chaplin’s little tramp in The Gold Rush (1925) 200 Warner Home Video, 2003 Figure 10. Temporal transitions. Le mystère Picasso (1956) 215 Illustration 37 from Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality [1960] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Figure 11. The final scene is not the end. Nights of Cabiria (1957) 217 Criterion, 1999. Figure 12. The view from the moving streetcar in Umberto D. (1952) 221 Nouveaux, 2004. Figure 13. The German priests in the rain, The Bicycle Thief (1948) 221 Arrow Video, 2006. Figure 14. Mae Marsh’s hands in Intolerance (1916) 224 Illustration 11 from Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality [1960] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Figure 15. The giant animal mass. Metropolis (1927) 226 Illustration 28 from Kracauer, Siegfried, From Caligari to Hitler. A psychological history of the German film [1947] (New York: Princeton University Press, 2004). Figure 16. The dancing will-o’-the-wisps in Aparajito (1956) 227 Artificial Eye, 2003. Figure 17. The abyss of everyday life. Le Sang des Bêtes (1949) 232 Illustration 59 from Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality [1960] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). vi Figure 18. A “genuine” western. The Iron Horse (1924) 252 Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2007. Figure 19. “Sallie Gardner”, Eadweard Muybridge (1878) 253 Solnit, Rebecca, Motion Studies: Time, Space and Eadweard Muybridge (London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2004), p.182. Figure 20. The “manes of the galloping horses”, Ben Hur (1925) 254 Warner Home Video, 2006. Figure 21. Images of the North African campaign, Desert Victory (1943) 256 Illustration 13 from Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality [1960] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Figure 22. The tortuous course of Sterne’s narrative, Tristram Shandy (1759 – 1767) 256 Sterne, Laurence, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1996), p. 152. Figure 23. Fred Astaire toying with real life, Top Hat (1935) 258 Universal Pictures, 2007. Figure 24. The Dancer’s Frenzy, Jazz Dance (1954) 262 Illustration 12 from Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality [1960] (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Figure 25. The “trembling leaves” in Repas de bébé (1895) 271 British Film Institute Video, 2005. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the staff and post-graduate students of the School of Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia for all their assistance and encouragement. In particular I would like to thank my supervisors, Prof Mark Jancovich, who rescued this project from oblivion, and Dr. Brett Mills. I am also very grateful to Prof John Mack, Prof Sandy Heslop and Dr Simon Dell of the School of Art History and World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia for enabling me to complete my studies, Tom Hickey of the University of Brighton and Peter Hignell at the University of Sussex library.
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