Books by Siegfried Kracauer

A study of the cinematic history of the Weimar Republic. It examines German history from 1921 to 1933 in light of such movies as "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari", "M", "Metropolis", and "The Blue Angel". It is suitable for the film historian, film theorist, or cinema enthusiast.

Siegfried Kracauer¿s biography of the composer Jacques Offenbach is a remarkable work of social and cultural history. First published in German in 1937 and in English translation in 1938, the book uses the life and work of Offenbach as a focal point for a broad and penetrating portrayal of Second Empire Paris. Offenbach¿s immensely popular operettas have long been seen as part of the larger historical amnesia and escapism that pervaded Paris in the aftermath of 1848. But Kracauer insists that Offenbach¿s productions must be understood as more than glittering distractions. The fantasy realms of such operettas as La Belle Hélène were as one with the unreality of Napoleon III¿s imperial masquerade, but they also made a mockery of the pomp and pretense surrounding the apparatuses of power. At the same time, Offenbach¿s dreamworlds were embedded with a layer of utopian content that can be seen as an indictment of the fraudulence and corruption of the times.

Siegfried Kracauer was one of the foremost representatives of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. This book brings together Kracauer's essays on photography that he wrote between 1927 and 1933 as a journalist for the Frankfurter Zeitung, as well as an essay that appeared in the Magazine of Art after the eminent emigre's exile to America.

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 emigre intellectual.

A study of the relationship between past and present, and the relation between histories in different levels of generality. One after another Siegfried Kracauer examines various theories of history and exposes their strengths and weaknesses.

Explores the distinctive qualities of the cinematic medium. This book takes its place alongside works in classical film theory by such figures as Bela Balazs, Rudolf Arnheim, and Andre Bazin, among others, and has met with much critical dispute.

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 celebrates the masses-their tastes, amusements, and everyday lives.