Siegfried Kracauer's 'Theory of Film' Finally Published in French

Fifty years after its original 1960 publication, Siegfried Kracauer's 'Theory of Film' has been released in French by Éditions Flammarion, following a wave of translations of his major works. The book offers a systematic analysis of filmic image through technical, aesthetic, historical, and political lenses, centered on the 'basic aesthetic principle' that a medium's achievements are most satisfying when they leverage its specific properties. Kracauer argues for cinema's capacity to reveal the 'flow of life' and 'material reality,' distinguishing between 'cinema' and 'film.' The translation arrives at a pivotal moment for film theory, caught between historicist and cognitivist approaches. Kracauer, born in Frankfurt in 1899, was a renowned film critic for the Frankfurter Zeitung before fleeing to France and then the US in 1941. His work is linked to the Frankfurt School, Erwin Panofsky, and Walter Benjamin. The preface by Jean-Louis Leutrat highlights a 'diptych' between Kracauer's 'Theory of Film' and his 'History: The Last Things Before the Last.'