Table Of ContentCinematic Realism
66556688__AAiittkkeenn..iinndddd ii 2288//1100//2200 99::4466 PPMM
Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
66556688__AAiittkkeenn..iinndddd iiii 2288//1100//2200 99::4466 PPMM
Cinematic Realism
Lukács, Kracauer and Theories of the Filmic Real
Ian Aitken
66556688__AAiittkkeenn..iinndddd iiiiii 2288//1100//2200 99::4466 PPMM
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books
and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge
scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance.
For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
© Ian Aitken, 2020
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt by
IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and
printed and bound in Great Britain
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 4134 6 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 4136 0 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 4137 7 (epub)
The right of Ian Aitken to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights
Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498)
66556688__AAiittkkeenn..iinndddd iivv 2288//1100//2200 99::4466 PPMM
Contents
Acknowl edgements vi
Preface vii
Introduction: Representation, Perception and Cinematic Realism 1
1. Bergson, the Image and Time 45
2. Introduction to Lukács: Essence, Phenomena and Temporality 72
3. ‘On the Phenomenology of the Creative Process’ (Lukács 1914) 94
4. ‘Thoughts towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema’ (Lukács 1913) 113
5. The Specificity of the Aesthetic (Lukács 1963) 133
6. Husserl, Epochē and Lebenswelt 157
7. Introduction to Kracauer: Abstraction, Redemption and Modernity 180
8. ‘Photography’ (Kracauer 1927) 191
9. ‘Introduction: Photography’ and ‘Basic Concepts’, from
Theory of Film (Kracauer 1960) 217
10. ‘The Historical Approach’ and ‘The Historian’s Journey’,
from History: The Last Things Before the Last (Kracauer 1968) 254
Bibliography 290
Index 304
66556688__AAiittkkeenn..iinndddd vv 2288//1100//2200 99::4466 PPMM
Acknowledgements
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the various and numerous
colleagues with whom I have discussed aspects of this book over the last
three years. I would also like to acknowledge the support of the School of
Communication and Academy of Film of Hong Kong Baptist University.
Particularly, I would like to thank Eva Man and Huang Yu, for helping to
arrange my sabbatical at Edinburgh University during September to Decem-
ber 2019. This sabbatical enabled me to bring this book to fruition. I would
also like to acknowledge the support of the School of Languages, Literature
and Culture at Edinburgh University during my sabbatical. The manuscript
for this book was delivered to Edinburgh University Press during the period
of virus lockdown, and I would like to thank my wife and children for provid-
ing me with support and peace of mind during this unsettling time. As I now
head into retirement, leaving Hong Kong after spending fifteen years there
and returning to my native Scotland, I am aware that I will miss the people
of Hong Kong, and wish them well in their struggle against the virus, and for
freedom and democracy. I hope to return on a regular basis.
66556688__AAiittkkeenn..iinndddd vvii 2288//1100//2200 99::4466 PPMM
Preface
This book has grown out of my previous writings on cinematic realism. As I
reviewed those writings, going back to the 1980s, I do not think that my core
beliefs concerning cinematic realism have changed overmuch. The same con-
cern with philosophical realism, the philosophy of perception, phenomenology,
and even classical Marxism and the Frankfurt School, still permeate this present
work. In my book The Major Realist Film Theorists (2016), a long Introduction
attempted to set out the key characteristics of what I first called ‘intuitionist
cinematic realism’, and then ‘phenomenal cinematic realism’. This provided
the starting point for the focus on phenomenology in the current book. I had
become convinced that Bergsonian conceptions of time had influenced the writ-
ings of Georg Lukács, and that certain Husserlian notions, particularly that of
the Lebenswelt, had significantly influenced the writings of Siegfried Kracauer.
The structure of the present book has evolved from that. The long Introduction
attempts to set out a model of cinematic realism based on a philosophical realist
and ‘externalist’ position, and takes the matter further on from the consider-
ations covered in the Introduction to The Major Realist Film Theorists. This
is followed by an introductory chapter on Bergson, which serves as a founda-
tion for the following four chapters, which cover the work of Lukács. In these
chapters, and amongst other matters, I follow Lukács’s intellectual move from
Platonism to phenomenology. The same structure is then repeated for Kracauer:
an introductory chapter on Husserl is followed by four chapters on Kracauer’s
theory. The objective was to explore these pieces of writings in as much depth
as possible, and, so, the focus on them is relatively intense. I decided not to
write a ‘Conclusions’ to the book, as this would impose an artificial closure on
writings which are full of and vibrant with connotation and possibility. Indeed,
it is not possible to bring closure to the subject of either cinematic realism or
realism in general, and I intend to keep pursuing both.
66556688__AAiittkkeenn..iinndddd vviiii 2288//1100//2200 99::4466 PPMM
66556688__AAiittkkeenn..iinndddd vviiiiii 2288//1100//2200 99::4466 PPMM
INTRODUCTION
Representation, Perception and
Cinematic Realism
This Introduction will begin with an account of the relation between rep-
resentation and reality. The purpose of this is not to provide a compre-
hensive account of that relation, but to furnish a platform for an exploration of
cinematic realism. What follows is, therefore, a schematic outline of an endur-
ing area of philosophical enquiry. In the writings of Henri Bergson, which will
be considered in the first chapter of this book, ‘reality’ is principally defined
as that which is displayed within states of consciousness concerning a known
material reality external to those states but which those states are also part
of. Here, the phrase ‘known material reality’ refers to phenomenal reality as
revealed by the senses, our more abstract conceptual knowledge of material
reality as revealed by the intellect, and a material reality that can be imagined,
given current understandings, even though those understandings may be lim-
ited (for example, certain aspects of quantum mechanics). Bergson is not overly
concerned with what might exist outside of known material reality: what is fre-
quently referred to as an unknowable ‘external reality’. External reality is that
which lies outside of our conceptual schemes and cognitive–sensory capacities,
and, consequently, it is a reality that cannot be engaged with directly.
Nomenclature can, however, become easily disordered, because the phrase
‘external reality’ is often used as a substitute for the phrase material reality, and
to indicate a fundamental binary opposition between that externality and ‘inter-
nal’ reality, or consciousness. In this Introduction, however, the phrase material
reality will be used to indicate known and potentially knowable material reality,
whilst the phrase external reality will be used to indicate a potentially always
unknowable material reality. Known and potentially knowable material reality,
together with unknowable external reality, form the totality of reality, and this
totality means that the idea that only known or potentially knowable material
reality constitutes reality is an ‘idealist’ and ‘anthropocentric’ one (Trigg 1989:
xxiv). Reality, as a totality, is not anthropocentric; and this also means that it is
66556688__AAiittkkeenn..iinndddd 11 2288//1100//2200 99::4466 PPMM
