The film theory of Bla Balzs (1884-1949) is known to Anglo-American read-

ers primarily by way of Theory of the Film, originally published in 1948 in Hungary as
Filmkultra and translated into English in 1952.* Balzs had previously published two
book-length works of film theory, Der sichtbare Mensch (The Visible Man, 1924) and
Der Geist des Films (The Spirit of the Film, 1930), which are as yet untranslated into
English. He had also written numerous film reviews and essays on film, which are also
largely untranslated. The purpose of this cluster of essays and translations is to help
in the task of making Balzss early work on the cinema and related topics better
known to Anglo-American audiences. In his essay, Hanno Loewy, a German-language
scholar who has written extensively about Balzs and republished much of his work in
Germany, situates Balzss early film theory within his broader intellectual concerns,
his creative writings (including screenplays), and his biography. In my essay, I clarify
some of the arguments from Balzss early work on the cinema that made their way
into Theory of the Film, and situate them within the history of film theory. These argu-
ments, I claim, exemplify a hitherto neglected tradition of film theory that I call
revelationist.
The following texts were translated by Russell Stockman. Thanks to Stuart
Liebman for his help in selecting them.

Malcolm Turvey










* According to Joseph Zsuffa, it is a common misconcept ion that Filmkultra is the same as
Iskusstvo Kino, published in Russia in 1945 (Bla Balzs, The Man and the Artist [Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1987], p. 496n69). While parts of the two editions correspond, Filmkultra is a differ-
ent book.

OCTOBER 115, Winter 2006, p. 46. 2006 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Compulsive Cameramen*













BLA BALZS



The posthumous film of the South Pole explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who
filmed his own death as if he were screaming his death cry into a phonograph, was
the second film of its kind. In the previous year, the film of Ernest Henry Shackletons
journey to the South Pole had showed far more dramatically, even though Shackleton
escaped with his life, the struggles of a man who in his campaign of conquest tran-
scended his own physical limitations.What is particularly remarkable about these films
is not their images of hand-to-hand combat with murderous nature, nor their depic-
tion of bravery, determination, and heroic solidaritya good director could have
invented all these scenes and staged them far more effectively. Nor is it that these are
actual eventswe have had numerous reports of men capable of staring death calmly
in the eye well before these English seamen and geographers. What is unusual and
new is that these men looked at death through the lens of the movie camera.
That is the new, objectified form of human self-awareness. As long as these men
did not lose consciousness, they did not take their hand off the crank of their cam-
era. Shackletons ship is broken to bits by massive slabs of ice. It was filmed. Their last
dog dies. It was filmed. The way back to normal life was blocked, there was no hope.
It was filmed. They drift on an ice floe, and the ice floe melts beneath their feet. It
was filmed. Captain Scott sets up his last tent and with his comrades goes inside as
though into a tomb to wait for death. It was filmed. Just as the ship captain on the
bridge and the telegraph operator at his Marconi apparatus are to stay at their posts,
the cameraman stayed at his and filmed until his hand froze to the handle.
This was a new kind of self-examination. These men thought about themselves
in that they filmed themselves. The interior process of accounting for themselves
shifted to the outside. Their self-observation was mechanically preserved up to the
last minute of their lives. The film of self-control that heretofore conscience had
unreeled inside their heads wound up on the spool of the camera, and conscience,
which previously mirrored itself only for itself, relegated this function to a machine,
which preserved that mirror image for others to see as well. In this way subjective
mentality is transformed into a social one.

* First published in Der Tag, March 22, 1925.


OCTOBER 115, Winter 2006, pp. 5152. 2006 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 52 OCTOBER



Of course the camera has the advantages of not having nerves and of being
harder to confuse than the conscience. And the psychological process reverses itself.
One doesnt film as long as one remains conscious; one remains conscious as long as
one films. It is as though mental acuity is buttressed from without. Presence of mind
becomes the presence of the camera. And in that presence one behaves as in the
presence of a stranger, more disciplined than when alone. That is the mystery of self-
possession, of which the Anglo-Saxons have given us so many imposing examples.
Since they lose consciousness with such difficulty, they know nothing of the attendant
ecstasy. But also nothing of panic.
A young woman behind us in the cinema asked her companion, Why did these
men have to die? A level-headed and intelligent person, she was enraged. What was
the point of all their effort, their suffering? Who profited from it? It was a pointless
struggle, senseless heroism, energy wasted on nothing at all, she felt, and she was
much too clever to believe in the exalted scientific goals with which her companion
tried to excuse the poor English captain, and which, though they are indeed a factor,
have no bearing on the sacrifices involved. One would have to explain the meaning
of such senselessness to this rational little woman with different, even wholly irra-
tional arguments. One could have said, for example, that through such foolhardy
and impractical exertions man reveals his true humanity. All else is but a more
sophisticated manifestation of the survival instinct, which in no way distinguishes
man from the beasts. The human soul reveals itself most clearly and in its purest
form in such follies, and that is why these films are so gripping and so splendid
despite their ludicrous senselessness.
One might also have assured t he young Viennese woman t hat t hese
Englishmen were true earth dwellers. They have a conscious feeling for the earth, in the
same way that one is said to have feeling for ones country, for example, one that
implies a definite sense of responsibility: a person has to know where he is. They do
not live in Vienna or London; they inhabit the globe, and they explore all the cellars
and attics of their ancestral property. A person is never truly at home in any place
until he has fully explored it. Also, one could have reminded the young, middle-class
wife that, at the sight of this white infinity, where the polar night merges with the
blackness of space, all of human civilization, with its great metropolises, suddenly
strikes one as hopelessly provincial, like the Podunk of the planet. Is it not under-
st andable, then, that a man who is aware of this greater truth but lives in the
oppressive constriction of Berlin, Paris, London, or New York develops a yearning for
the strenuous life that relegates the petty life of ordinary men to the shadows?
As for the pointlessness of such displays of energy, it must be said that a man is
never aware of his goals from the outset, so that he might subsequently develop the
strength for them. It is his new ability that sets new goals, and his increasing strength
expands the boundaries of what is imagined impossible. The fire has to be burning
before we can begin to see what can be illuminated.
That is the meaning of every human fire, even if its immediate purpose is not
instantly clear to us. The pointless heroism of these English seamen was perhaps
nothing more than an exercise demonstrating mans moral force. A person has to
know what he is capable of; when worse comes to worst such a yardstick is crucial.
 Chaplin, or The American Simpleton*













BLA BALZS



The past week was all his. Five Chaplin films showing simult aneously.
Chaplinmania appears to be spreading here as well, and one has to wonder what it
is that makes this flat-footed American clown so magical. Is he truly more than a
mere comic? Is he really a very great actor, as some serious critics insist? At first,
despite an unprecedented amount of promot ional advert ising, he struck us
Europeans as foreign. Now, little by little, he appears to be winning us over. How
can we explain this?
Chaplin is a popular humorist. His antics are not psychologically complex. He
portrays the simple comedy of ordinary experience. His enemies are things. He is
always dealing with civilizations most ordinary features. To him, doors, stairs, chairs,
platesall our everyday conveniencespresent difficult challenges. He addresses
them as a backwoods schlemiel, quite unlike normal cit y- dweller s. Chaplin is
impracticaland Americans find that funny. But today America is not only a corner
of the world but a life force, one that is beginning to dominate European civilization.
There is nothing more grotesque than the impractical person who deals with objects
and contrivances in the wrong way.
The old fair y t ales about the Schildbrger were expressions of peasant
humorstories of ignorant farmers who thought they could carry sunlight into
their windowless church in sacks. Chaplin, as a pawnbroker, checks the clock
brought in for pawn with a stethoscope, then opens it with a can opener. He is the
modern, American Schildbrger. For the first time since that naive, agrarian peas-
ant comedy, he br ings the comedy of the Schildbrger to the industr ialized
metropolis.
Chaplin is impractical, to be surebut he is by no means awkward. On the
contrary; he is a phenomenally skilled acrobat. And for that reason his encounters
with trappings of civilization unfamiliar to him become exciting, heroic duels in
which he ultimately emerges victorious. In this there is a certain grotesque and ironic
rebellion against our machine-driven culture. That is the profundity of Chaplinss art,
which reveals it self in the touching melancholy of his pantomime as a naive

* First published in Der Tag, December 8, 1922.


OCTOBER 115, Winter 2006, pp. 5354. 2006 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 54 OCTOBER



humanity estranged from civilization and left to its own devices. Chaplin is indeed
a great artist. And the IFA Palastkino was right to devote an entire evening to him.
The film in which he has Fatty as a partner (Between Showers, 1914) was especially
instructive. For it allowed us to see the difference between the two, the incompa-
rably higher art of Chaplin. Arbuckle is also grotesque, also an acrobat, and also a
good actor. But his persona is not bathed in this warm, sad aura of some deeper
significance. There is something calculat ing and jarr ing about his t iming. His
grotesquer ie is merely decorat ive and hollow, not lyr ical like Chaplins. In
Chaplin, this shrewd and impudent schlemiel of the modern metropolis, one
always has the sense that somehow, even when engaged in the most ridiculous
nonsense, he is right.
 Film Criticism!*













BLA BALZS



Why is there no film criticism in Vienna? Why is every operetta turned into a
cultural event, but no critics bother with film? Why does no one bother with the
art of the people?
Aesthetes may turn up their aristocratic noses, but that does not alter the
fact that the cinema has become the art, the poetry, the vision of the people, a
decisive element of popular culture. Wondering whether this is good or bad is
silly; for in Vienna alone there are already 180, I repeat, 180 cinemas showing
films every night. One hundred and eighty cinemas with an average of 450 seats,
presenting two or three programs every day. If we figure houses three-quarters
full, this amounts to 200,000 people a day. Figure it out for yourself.
For the urban population of today, the cinema is what folk songs and folk-
tales used to be. Please, no aesthetic comparisons. It may annoy us, but it is a
sociological fact. And just as folk songs and folktales were subjects of folklore,
recalling the cultural history of past centuries, from now on no one will be able to
write a history of culture or national psychology without devoting a major chapter
to the cinema. Those who see this fact as a great danger are the very ones who
have an obligation to help out with constant, earnest, systematic criticism. For this
is not something confined to literary salons but a matter of a nations health.
Moreover, it is high time to do away with aesthetic prejudice against the cin-
ema. It is simply ludicrous that the critic who analyzes with furrowed brow the
artistic qualities of an operetta singer refuses to follow the theaters most impor-
tant and celebrated artists when they venture into the realm of film, and yet today
there are no dramatic actors, no matter how serious or talented, who have not
tested their art on film, and not only because of the money but because of the
aching desire for immortality that every actor feels.
Above all film is a wholly new art emerging from a new culture. However
inadequate it may be in its infancy, it deserves our undivided attention. A means
of expressing ideas that can affect mankind so univer sally and so profoundly,
owing to the potentially limitless distribution of its technology, must surely compare

* First published in Der Tag, December 1, 1922.


OCTOBER 115, Winter 2006, pp. 5556. 2006 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 56 OCTOBER



in importance to the technological innovations of Gutenberg in his day. Victor
Hugo once wrote that the printed book took over the role of the medieval cathe-
dral. The book became the vehicle for the popular imagination and shredded it
into millions of minor views. The book shattered stone: the undivided church split
into thousands of books. From visible ideas there evolved readable ideas, from a
visual culture a conceptual one. There is no need to discuss any further how this
fact has changed the face of human society.
Today, however, another machine is giving human society new forms of ideas.
The many millions of people who sit back every evening and watch pictures, wordless
pictures depicting human feelings and ideasthese many millions of people are in
the process of learning a new language: the long-forgotten language of pantomime,
which is now being revived (and on an international scale). Behind every truly new
language, however, a new spirit and new modes of perception dwell; and to the
degree that it is art, this pantomime is far from the gesticulations replacing con-
cept s and words used by t he deaf and dumb. A v isual spir it and modes of
perception that slumbered out of the reach of words during centuries of abstract,
intellectual concepts are gradually resurfacing. Is it possible that we are standing
on the threshold of a new visual culture?
This is only, by the way, to suggest that film can serve even the most zealous
of aesthetes as a subject for interesting study. It is necessary that one not be fright-
ened off by its initial helplessness. No matter how problematic the products of this
art have been to date, it s potential is incalulable. Perhaps that potential will be
greatly influenced by serious, pertinent, penetrating criticism.
Beginning today, I plan to open my columns to just such pertinent, methodical
criticism.