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F i l m - P h i l o s o p h y
ISSN 1466-4615
http://www.film-philosophy.com
Volume 3 Number 37
September 1999
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Paul M. Malone
Negotiating Modernity in Weimar Film Theory
Sabine Hake
_The Cinema's Third Machine: Writing on Film in Germany 1907-1933_
Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1993
ISBN 0-8032-2365-X (hbk.)
xvii + 353 pp.
'Every time a new cultural practice emerges, the established systems of
thought are put into question, and, for a short moment, critical paradigms
are open to reexamination and renegotiation' (ix).
The title of Sabine Hake's massive book may at first sight puzzle any
reader who fails to recognize its origin in Christian Metz's _The Imaginary
Signifier_, which defined the 'third machine' as 'discourse about the
cinema' [1] -- the first two 'machines' being the film industry itself and
the cinema-socialised spectator's psychology. [2] That same reader, once
enlightened by the epigraph to Hake's introduction (ix), may continue to be
nonplussed if, as I am, that reader is inclined to dismiss most of Metz's
psychoanalytically-inclined work as vague nonsense (and here I confess to
being swayed by Noel Carroll's critique of Metz [3]).
The hypothetical and curmudgeonly reader I have imagined, however, would be
mistaken to lay this important and informative book aside merely because of
its title. For one thing, beyond a couple of cursory mentions of the
'imaginary' and a few appearances of the 'Other', there is not a great deal
of Metz (or of Lacan via Metz, as the case may be) explicitly to be found
in the book, pound for pound. Indeed, beyond the epigraph, Metz's name
never once appears in the text. And yet, to forestall the disappointment of
any Metz enthusiasts who may be reading this review, the spectre of Metz,
informing Hake's approach and hovering over the book as a patron shade, is
nonetheless curiously appropriate; for various reasons which I hope will
become clear.
The central thesis of Hake's work, based on the premise given in the
opening quotation to this review, is that during the years in question, the
emergence of a new medium *cum* social practice forced German intellectual
society, with its strong traditions of taking aesthetic criticism seriously
as a constituent of public discourse, into a position of reevaluation:
critics, in other words, used film criticism to 'define their function'
both in relation to the cinema and in relation to 'the bourgeois public
sphere' (ix). On this view, film criticism is in a sense hardly 'about'
film at all, but rather about the society that produces both the criticism
and its object. At roughly the same time, however, 'film' itself (or more
properly the film industry) quickly began to develop its own self-promoting
discourse, first through trade publications and later by means of fan
magazines and other mass-media outlets, appealing to both prospective
distributors and prospective spectators. [4] As a result, the totality of
this discourse about cinema and film can be seen as a mirror of the larger
society during a crucial period in German history, and as an aspect of the
negotiation of mass culture and modernity.
Hake therefore argues further that the major watersheds in the construction
of film discourse in Germany are not such events as the arrival of sound in
1927, dividing criticism into 'silent' and 'sound', but instead the social
crises: the fall of the Hohenzollern monarchy with Germany's defeat in the
First World War; the shaky founding of the Weimar Republic; the depression
and the rise of nationalism and fascism (xi). The major transition during
the period according to this interpretation, that is, from monarchy to
republic, is reflected in a notable change of terminology in the critical
discourse, as critics move from dealing with the 'cinema' (in German, 'das
Kino' or old-fashioned 'der Kintopp' or 'Kientopp'; words which in German,
as in British English, denote both the technology and the physical/social
space where the technology is exhibited to the spectator) to discussing
'film' ('der Film', both as individual artwork and as abstract aesthetic
category). Hake's account is accordingly divided into two sections,
'Writing on Cinema in Wilhelmine Germany, 1907-1918' and 'Writing on Film
in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933'. The end of the second period is marked
by a final crisis: the crippling of all aesthetic criticism by Goebbels's
infamous dictum that all art criticism in the Third Reich was to to be
simply descriptive rather than evaluative.
Hake's first section is particularly noteworthy for its exposure to an
English readership of a great deal of obscure writing: technical and trade
journalism and sociological studies rub shoulders with better-known, though
seldom-translated, examples of 'highbrow' criticism and fevered
Expressionist enthusiasm. Even for the German-speaking reader, much of this
writing would be hard to find without knowing exactly what to look for. At
first, while the trade publications unashamedly treated cinema as a
technical wonder whose drawing power made it a commodity, reformers from
both ends of the political spectrum yearned for an educational cinema and
bemoaned the potential effect of cinemagoing on the working classes who
formed the majority of the audience; only after a brief settling-in period
did discourse on the cinema expand to include sociological studies,
references in poetry and fiction, and philosophical or psychological
analyses. Vitalism and phenomenology, as well as Freud's theory of
'Schaulust', or the 'scopic drive', were enlisted to explain the pleasure
taken by the film audience -- that is, by the audience except for the
critic, who of course was only in attendance for scientific purposes (99).
Hake's refusal to privilege discourses on the basis of 'high' or 'low'
culture, or to rank literary or academic production above public relations
and trade writing, creates a lively cross-section of Wilhelmine culture
while demonstrating common threads running through otherwise unconnected
discourses. Her fine ear for the use of language in the texts she analyses
is all the more impressive given the difficulty of working through
translations of the texts, and the variable quality of those translations
(many of the best, and some of the worst, are Hake's own; admittedly, some
of the texts are doubtless bad examples of style in the original German as
well). Particularly arresting is the agreement across the political
spectrum in the early period that the cinema represents a social threat
equivalent to drugs or alcohol: damaging physically, mentally, and morally
(49-52). However dubious the existence of Metz's putative film spectator,
subject to a supposed 'dream-like and sleepy confusion of film and
reality', [5] in the condescending view of the critics of the Wilhelmine
reform movement, the working classes formed exactly this sort of audience:
the right wing feared that the workers would become too distracted to work,
while the left was equally concerned that the proletariat would be too
enervated to rise up. These attitudes later continue beneath the surface of
the critical culture of the Weimar Republic; indeed, to some extent, they
were reinforced in the 1920s by the rise of National Socialism on the one
hand, and Leninism on the other (185-211). The Wilhelmine expressions of
these attitudes are generally more overt, and never more so than when the
subject is the relatively recent phenomenon of the working woman, doubly
handicapped intellectually by being proletarian and female, and that even
in the writings of (bourgeois) female sociologists such as Emilie Altenloh
(45-48; 51-52).
Hake's long second section, compared to which the first only forms a brief
introduction, deals with the Weimar period and the move from concentrating
on cinema spectatorship to analyzing the filmic medium, as heralded by the
rise of film-based, rather than cinema-based, terms of reference. During
this period, the cinema began to appeal to the middle classes, not entirely
coincidentally given that the government's propaganda aims in the final
years of the war had led to the creation of major production entities,
first Deulig and ultimately the famous Ufa studio. Almost overnight, film
had to be taken seriously as a medium. The centrepiece of the book is
formed by the first four chapters of the second section, 'The Rise of Film
Criticism', 'Toward a Philosophy of Film', 'Fictions of Cinema', and 'The
Politicization of Film'. All four of these chapters cover roughly the
entire time span 1918-1933 from different perspectives: roughly and
respectively, the ongoing commodification, aestheticisation, mediatisation,
and, obviously, politicisation of film as art (or non-art, depending on the
writer). In a sense, however, the second of these chapters, as the seventh
of twelve in total, is itself a sort of pivot point for the entire work,
and I will concentrate on this chapter.
Hake speaks here of a philosophy of film in the sense that the physicality
and gestures of the body (including above all the face) in the silent film
were claimed by humanistic critics as a sign of the universality of
experience, and therefore as a spiritual counterweight to modernity's
fragmentation of experience. Here, in materialist and essentialist claims
which extolled the technology of film in service of a basically
anti-technological romantic idealism, the body thus became the site where
spectatorship gave way to representation as the subject of theory. Such
early stars as Asta Nielsen and Charlie Chaplin provoked this concentration
on face and gesture, but in this concentration, Hake argues, the stars
became more 'real' than the spectator, so that in the end the spectator was
reduced to a reflection of the star. In place of a discourse which focused
on the working classes as quasi-somnambulistic cinemagoers receptive to
good or ill from the screen, this new, more academic discourse of
representation 'allowed writers to . . . project their dreams of redemption
onto the images on the screen, which were simultaneously so distant and so
close' (131). And here, incidentally, we leave behind the last recognizable
echo of Metz. [6]
In the light of these projections of redemption, Hake's analysis links the
increasing concentration of the film industry into a few major studios and
the rise of the 'prestige' film with the growth in academic interest in
film, expanding from the legal and economic disciplines pre-World War I to
the humanistic disciplines post-war. Thus, even as the industry became more
aggressively capitalist, the academic discourse became more aesthetic and
theoretical, obscuring the social reality and apparently domesticating the
new medium within an increasingly institutionalized conceptual framework
which largely excluded political consideration (except where politics could
be reintroduced under an aesthetic guise). Hence the proliferation of
normative writings purporting to set out the artistic 'laws' of film,
usually in terms of conventional narrative form under the guidance of a
single artist's vision, equally out of touch with social reality and with
the cutting edge of contemporary art (144-51). More avant-garde writers,
such as the director Walter Ruttmann, favoured anti-narrative and even
anti-representational forms, but remained marginalised in the face of the
prevalent aesthetic discourse (151-7).
Hake's thesis is complex, and I have certainly failed to do it justice
here, first by presenting it in its barest outlines and second by isolating
this chapter from the other three which surround it. Suffice to say,
however, that Hake argues her case throughout these chapters with
considerable clarity and with a great deal of documentary evidence
(admittedly, the evidence *could* be pre-selected and the translations, in
this case, skewed, but this danger exists with all such projects and here I
see no compelling reason to lay such charges).
The final chapters of the second section, and of the book as a whole, are a
discussion of the early, and relatively unknown film writings of Bela
Balazs, Siegfried Kracauer, and Rudolf Arnheim. The ideas of these critics
take on a new and deeper resonance against the historical background
provided in the preceding chapters All three men were leftists of Jewish
bourgeois stock, steeped in contemporary philosophical movements, and all
three were forced to come to terms with the rise of National Socialism, but
each chose a different approach to film; Hake interprets them as the
creators of a true 'theory of cinema' which incorporates cinematic
experience as a whole -- as opposed to 'philosophies' which, on her view,
isolate only specific aspects (212). Her bringing them in at the conclusion
of this book is meant to reclaim them from an ahistorical and depoliticised
view which identifies them with 'the heroic project of a universally valid
theory of film' and 'present[s] as closed systems of thought that which is
really the product of intellectual development under specific historical
conditions' (213-4). Hake presents Balazs as an idealist whose vision of
'film as modern folklore' (216) moves him to attempt a synthesis of
philosophy, traditional aesthetics, and radical politics; Kracauer as a
materialist social critic with a detective's eye for 'the transgressive
quality of cinema' (248); and Arnheim as a Gestalt-influenced cognitivist
with a technician's eye and a firm belief in the critic's function to
establish 'artistic standards' (282).
While all three of these lengthy portraits speak well for Hake's approach
by providing a much richer and more nuanced view of these critics' ideas
than one is likely to find in the standard reference works, it is the
concluding depiction of Rudolf Arnheim and his complex, even
self-contradictory ideas (further complicated by his exile and his having
to rework his writings for a 1950s American readership), which is truly
revelatory in comparison to the usual, rather offhand dismissal of Arnheim
as a crank due to his championing of silent films for decades after the
introduction of sound. It is in this connection that Hake, in two notes
(318), quite rightly upbraids Noel Carroll (and since it was I who
introduced Carroll as one of my intellectual influences earlier, it's only
fair that I allow Hake a crack at him in response) for subscribing to
precisely such a dismissal, failing to take into account the historical
influences that shaped both his earlier and his later writings. [7] Hake's
point is well taken here, and before I reread anything by Balazs, Kracauer
or Arnheim, I intend to reread Hake's corresponding chapter first, in an
attempt to keep at bay the preconceptions I inherited of them.
At the same time, however, it must be said that the book's conclusion,
though impressive, also reveals a certain weakness of the work as it
stands: the complexity and richness of the multiple discourses which Hake
analyses throughout the book, and which she takes such pains to
contextualise, seem somewhat reduced by the realization that the final,
overarching result can itself be seen as a rather conventional, even mythic
tale of rise and sudden tragic fall: the confusion of voices produces three
giant figures of 'real theory' who are then sent into exile in their prime.
I would speculate, for example, in contrast to Hake's placing a decisive
full stop at the point of 'the repression of all critical discourse in
1933' (xi), that an approach which casts its net as wide as Hake does in
search of texts would also find intriguing points of philosophical and
aesthetic continuity in writing on film under the Nazis. But perhaps the
structure of Hake's narrative is only further proof of her earlier
assertion that 'myths, generalizations, and cliches were, from the very
beginning, an integral part of film's discourse about itself' (143).
Hake's project is primarily historiographic rather than philosophical per
se, and Hake therefore rightly spends far more time recounting the
philosophical stance of others than she does her own. Because I too am
primarily a historian, I take little issue here with the philosophical
content of this book. Her account of the thoughts of others may be her own
interpretation, but when those others are unknown I have no basis to
contest her interpretation, and when her interpretation is more satisfying
than the interpretations I am used to -- as is the case with Balazs,
Kracauer, and Arnheim -- I am simply not inclined to argue. Thick as it is,
this book's relatively modest goals include the introduction of this
material in historical context in order to prompt further research, which
will only then begin to debate in depth the critics of the period and their
relationship to film and to philosophy (xvii). Among the projects which
Hake singles out for potential future research, for example, is the tracing
of continuities between the philosophical ideas of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries and the early stages of cinema and film criticism in
Germany; likewise, a similar investigation of the beginnings of cinema
criticism in other countries would be the next step towards a comprehensive
comparative study (xvii). Particularly intriguing for me is the
anticipation in the work of many obscure early critics of later issues in
film theory -- above all, of exactly the sort of issues taken up again in
the 1960s and 1970s: questions of presence/absence, identity/other, etc.
(It is precisely this anticipation which makes Metz's work such an
intriguing point of intertextual reference, regardless of my opinion of
him.)
This book, however, has done far more than achieve its goals. Hake's
well-argued analyses and careful placing of cinema and film discourse in
the context of the debate on mass culture make her work vital, though
certainly not sufficient, for a thorough understanding of late Wilhelmine
and Weimar culture.
Two final caveats: while _The Cinema's Third Machine_ is hardly terribly
abstruse philosophically, its terrific wealth of detail and non-linear
narrative form may pose some challenge to any reader not reasonably
conversant with historical events and intellectual currents in Germany, and
in Europe at large, during this period. Most of the book's prospective
readers, however, are likely to have exactly this knowledge, so this is
hardly a major objection.
More importantly, this book straddles the threshold of respectability
within German studies, the discipline in which Hake and I work, where it is
practically a truism that film and film studies still do not get the
respect given to literature; an earlier review of Hake's book, among
others, has pointed out with slight exaggeration that under these
circumstances, writing about films 'might be damaging to one's career' as a
German scholar. [8] It may be in this light that one should interpret
Hake's closing remarks, to the effect that the historiography of film
theory must be separated from film history: 'Ultimately, the encounter of
theory and historiography can only be staged from within and with the help
of texts, that is to say, through textual interpretation' (300). Taken too
seriously, Hake's polemic could be seen as endorsing a completely
'filmless' study of film theory; and it is true that her book mentions
surprisingly few actual films, and most of them only in passing. It seems
clear to me, however, that she means by this to redress an imbalance which
has seen film criticism as having no other referent except film -- a view
to which her work eloquently gives the lie.
University of Waterloo, Canada
Footnotes
1. Christian Metz, _The Imaginary Signifier_, p. 14.
2. Ibid., pp. 7-9.
3. Noel Carroll, _Mystifying Movies _, pp. 32-48.
4. Metz, of course, argues that much film criticism becomes itself a form
of film advertising, even against its will, and Hake's approach implicitly
subscribes to this notion. On this point, I have no quarrel with Metz.
(_The Imaginary Signifier_, pp. 14-15.)
5. Metz, _The Imaginary Signifier_, p. 103.
6. In particular, see Metz, _The Imaginary Signifier_, pp. 42-57.
7. Noel Carroll, _Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory_, pp.
17-91. Of course, the ahistoricity of certain of Carroll's claims does not
necessarily invalidate all of his criticisms of Arnheim's theory.
8. Renate Fischetti, 'Review Essay: German Cinema', p.179.
Bibliography
Noel Carroll, _Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory_ (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).
--- _Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory_
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
Renate Fischetti, 'Review Essay: German Cinema', _The German Quarterly_
vol. 71 no. 2, Spring 1998.
Christian Metz, _The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema_,
trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster and Alfred Guzzetti
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982).
Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_ 1999
Paul M. Malone, 'Negotiating Modernity in Weimar Film Theory',
_Film-Philosophy_, vol. 3 no. 37, September 1999
<http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy/files/malone.html>.
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