History: The Last Things Before the Last

KRACAUER,Siegfried

Oxford University Press

Siegfried Kracauer's classic study, originally published in 1960, explores the distinctive qualities of the cinematic medium. The book takes its place alongside works in classical film theory by such figures as Bla Balzs, Rudolf Arnheim, and Andr Bazin, among others, and has met with much critical dispute. In this new edition, Miriam Bratu Hansen, examining the book in the context of Kracauer's extensive film criticism from the 1920s, provides a framework for appreciating the significance of Theory of Film for contemporary film theory.

Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

History: The Last Things Before the Last.

Selected Writings on Media, Propaganda, and Political Communication (New Directions in Critical Theory, 80)

Review\nHighly recommended book. -- Anna Maria Polidori ― Articles and more...\n[I] found Kracauer’s discussion of the importance of qualitative analysis to be very stimulating – and highly relevant to current challenges in assessing political dynamics. -- Mike Makin-Waite ― Process North\nA landmark achievement in Kracauer scholarship, this collection presents many of the formerly neglected and lesser-known writings by one of the twentieth century’s greatest social and cultural critics. Augmenting Kracauer’s reputation as a preeminent film scholar, this book demonstrates his equally impressive gifts as an incisive interpreter of mass media. -- Noah Isenberg, editor of Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna\nPainstakingly assembled and carefully annotated by Kang, Gilloch, and Abromeit, this wide-ranging collection of Siegfried Kracauer's analyses of mid-twentieth-century politics and culture reveals a hitherto ignored dimension of his remarkable legacy. Perhaps even more significantly, it still has much to teach us about the uncannily similar challenges we face today. -- Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley\nThis superb volume presents a richly detailed portrait of Siegfried Kracauer's diverse intellectual efforts over a period of more than two decades. The result is an illuminating collection of essays, articles, and projects―some unpublished during Kracauer's lifetime―that nicely complements existing publications in English. Not only are we presented with essays and articles on the new media, popular culture, and propaganda of Kracauer's time, but the insights gathered together in this collection will, for many readers, also shed light on contemporary society. -- Iain Macdonald, Université de Montréal\nSiegfried Kracauer stands out as one of the most significant theorists and critics of the twentieth century, acclaimed for his analyses of film and popular culture. However, his writing on propaganda and politics has been overshadowed by the works of his contemporaries and colleagues associated with the Frankfurt School.\nThis book brings together a broad selection of Kracauer’s work on media and political communication, much of it previously unavailable in English. It features writings spanning more than two decades, from studies of totalitarian propaganda written in the 1930s to wartime work on Nazi newsreels and anti-Semitism through to examinations of American and Soviet political messaging in the early Cold War period. These varied texts illuminate the interplay among politics, mass culture, and the media, and they encompass Kracauer’s core concerns: the individual and the masses, the conditions of cultural production, and the critique of modernity.\nThe introduction and afterword explore the significance of Kracauer’s contributions to critical theory, film and media studies, and the analysis of political communication both in his era and the present day. At a time when demagoguery and bigotry loom over world politics, Kracauer’s inquiries into topics such as the widespread appeal of fascist propaganda and the relationship of new media forms and technologies to authoritarianism are strikingly relevant.

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Columbia University Press

Offenbach and the Paris of His Time

Just as Jacques Offenbach exemplified the joie de vivre of mid-nineteenth-century Paris, Siegfried Kracauer's biography of the exuberant dandy, cello virtuoso, and Tales of Hoffman composer captures the extravagance of the carnivals, cafŽs, and boulevards Offenbach shared with his notable friends ƒmile Zola, Charles Baudelaire, and Richard Wagner, among others. Offenbach launched his career at the Paris Conservatoire when he was just fourteen, performing with the OpŽra-Comique shortly thereafter. Moving on to compose a body of work from waltzes to operettas, including Orpheus in the Underworld and La vie parisienne,. he continually faced criticisms of his music and lavish lifestyle. Kracauer's wide-ranging and astute cultural critique of Offenbach and mid-nineteenth-century Paris was first translated from the German and published in the United States in 1938. Revealing how the arts influenced one another and society, this enduring volume is a vivid portrait of a legendary time.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

University of Illinois Press

Siegfried Kracauer's American Writings: Essays on Film and Popular Culture (Volume 45) (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism)

Siegfried Kracauer (1889–1966), friend and colleague of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, was one of the most influential film critics of the mid-twentieth century. In this book, Johannes von Moltke and Kristy Rawson have, for the first time assembled essays in cultural criticism, film, literature, and media theory that Kracauer wrote during the quarter century he spent in America after fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. In the decades following his arrival in the United States, Kracauer commented on developments in American and European cinema, wrote on film noir and neorealism, examined unsettling political trends in mainstream cinema, and reviewed the contemporary experiments of avant-garde filmmakers. As a cultural critic, he also ranged far beyond cinema, intervening in debates regarding Jewish culture, unraveling national and racial stereotypes, and reflecting on the state of arts and humanities in the 1950s. These essays, together with the editors' introductions and an afterward by Martin Jay offer illuminating insights into the films and culture of the postwar years and provide a unique perspective on this eminent émigré intellectual.

University of California Press

Siegfried Kracauer was one of the twentieth century's most brilliant cultural critics, a daring and prolific scholar, and an incisive theorist of film. In this volume his finest writings on modern society make their long-awaited appearance in English.  This book is a celebration of the masses--their tastes, amusements, and everyday lives. Taking up themes of modernity, such as isolation and alienation, urban culture, and the relation between the group and the individual, Kracauer explores a kaleidoscope of topics: shopping arcades, the cinema, bestsellers and their readers, photography, dance, hotel lobbies, Kafka, the Bible, and boredom. For Kracauer, the most revelatory facets of modern life in the West lie on the surface, in the ephemeral and the marginal. Of special fascination to him is the United States, where he eventually settled after fleeing Germany and whose culture he sees as defined almost exclusively by "the ostentatious display of surface."  With these essays, written in the 1920s and early 1930s and edited by the author in 1963, Kracauer was the first to demonstrate that studying the everyday world of the masses can bring great rewards. The Mass Ornament today remains a refreshing tribute to popular culture, and its impressively interdisciplinary essays continue to shed light not only on Kracauer's later work but also on the ideas of the Frankfurt School, the genealogy of film theory and cultural studies, Weimar cultural politics, and, not least, the exigencies of intellectual exile.  In his introduction, Thomas Levin situates Kracauer in a turbulent age, illuminates the forces that influenced him--including his friendships with Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and other Weimar intellectuals--and provides the context necessary for understanding his ideas. Until now, Kracauer has been known primarily for his writings on the cinema. This volume brings us the full scope of his gifts as one of the most wide-ranging and penetrating interpreters of modern life.

The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays

Social Sciences

Harvard University Press

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