Film Theory & Analysis regarding Siegfried Kracauer
This assignment requires you to assess a work of realist film theory and then apply its observations to a relevant film.
The theoretical text is the first section of Siegfried Kracauer’s Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, available at this link: http://archive.org/details/theoryoffilmrede00krac
You should consider the following questions when reading Kracauer’s theory:
1) How would you describe the ontology, epistemology, and aesthetics of his theory? What arguments does Kracauer put forward to justify his positions regarding film’s essence, the specatator’s response, and the preferred techniques of the medium?
2) How does this theory compare to Bazin’s realist film theory?
After you have elucidated Kracauer’s text, identifying its key claims, you will need to choose one of the following films:
The Little Foxes (U.S.,1941)
The Magnificent Ambersons (U.S., 1942)
Germany, Year Zero (Italy, 1948)
Umberto D (Italy, 1952)
Pather Panchali (India, 1955)
Analyse the film chosen in terms of how it seems to embody central tenets of Kracauer’s theory. Be sure to provide an extended analysis of at least one key scene as you relate this film to Kracauer’s theory.
only reference the Kracauer text
The primary goal of this assignment is for you to provide a clear and systematic account of Kracauer’s film theory, as explicated in the first section of Theory of Film. In order to do so, you should be able to provide a sense of how his theory explains cinema’s ontology, epistemology and aesthetics. To review, this is what each entails:
i) ontology: the basic nature of the medium: what is the essence of cinema, when it is not deployed for any particular purpose?
ii) epistemology: how do we as viewers form a knowledge of cinema (and its ontology)? How do we understand the medium to operate?
iii) aesthetics: how does the ontological basis of cinema translate into artistic practice? What should cinema aim to do on the artistic level given its established essence?
Establishing the basics of Kracauer’s theory will involve: examining what he enlists as central assertions about what cinema is designed to accomplish as a medium; seeing how he builds up his case for defining cinema; how he explains what filmmakers should ideally do to ensure that they create ‘properly cinematic’ art.
Because Kracauer’s theory qualifies as realist, it might be instructive to compare his theory to that of Andre Bazin. You needn’t be overly detailed in your comparison, but at the very least you should describe how each theorist’s sense of the medium’s ontology compares, and perhaps note how that translates int each theorist’s aesthetic preferences. (For any discussion of Bazin’s theory, you should be able to restrict yourself to the essays contained in the course reader.)
Finally, to expand on the aesthetic applications of Kracauer’s theory, you are asked to imagine how he might write about any one of the following films. Each has a reputation for being a ‘realist’ film in one way or another. How would Kracauer apply his theory to any one of the following films?
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