Heidegger in the Literary World: Variations on Poetic Thinking ed. by Florian Grosser and Nassima Sahraoui (review)

Abstract

the film is in critical dialogue with Walter Benjamin’s views on childhood and youth; recent developments in cinema and the rise of child stars in Hollywood; and the current political situation between Nazi Germany and France. It is less clear how the text, based on a “Rashomon effect” of subjective perception, should be read not only as a plea for political realism and enlightenment but also as a critique of the Enlightenment famously elaborated in his “Ornament der Masse” (1927), as Rühse argues (210–212). Chapter six starts with the observation that Kracauer intended in his “Marseiller Entwurf,” his most developed attempt to write a book on film during his last year in France (1940/1941), to include a final chapter on one of Eisenstein’s unfinished film projects in Mexico, the short film Death Day (1934), independently edited by Sol Lesser. While Kracauer’s view of Eisenstein turned more critical in his Theory of Film towards the end of his life, Rühse pursues the striking claim that Kracauer’s theory of film originally hinged on his—misguided—understanding of Eisenstein’s political film work in Mexico and his view of the relationship between film and death, of which only a brief and enigmatic passage survives as a draft for an introduction to his “Marseiller Entwurf” (237). The book closes with a concise resume (chapter seven) that will prove useful for a hurried reader of Rühse’s work, as it contains several insights for scholars interested in Kracauer, film history, and cultural histories of Weimar Germany. In addition, Rühse’s book includes towards the ends of the chapters several passages that “update” Kracauer’s early work by connecting it further to literature, art, architecture, and film, including works by the French author and former cashier Anna Sam and the American artist Edward Hopper, contemporary dine-in cinema in New York, the Swiss short film Sounds of Nature (2013) by Simon Weber, as well as recent Academy award winners such as The Great Beauty by Paolo Sorrentino (2013) and Coco by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina (2017). These digressions, while largely convincing in their respective analyses, leave the reader somewhat puzzled, as their relevance to the book largely rests on the fact that motifs of early cinema persist—as mirrors—under considerably different circumstances in the contemporary popular culture of the Western world. Frederic Ponten, University of Regensburg