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PREFACE
Thenameof Bela Balazs is probably known in England only as Bela Bartok's librettist and the author of children's books, yet among the intelligentsia of Europe he ranks as a classic pioneer in the sphere of film theory. In particular his two books, published originally in German, entitled Der sichtbare Mensch (1923) and Der Geist des Films, were rated among the most important contributions to the theory of film art. They were indeed pioneering works, but, unfortunately, they were not translated and published in English. The European generalisation about England still seems to hold good; that we are empiricists in art and despise theory. Certainly this appears to be so in relation to theatre and cinema, for the publication of original works in French, German and Russian is extremely large compared to the number of similar books published here. It is most important, therefore, that Bela Balazs's last book should be available in English, for it sums up all the work, thought, and experience he put into his previous pioneering works, which have since become classics. It is, alas, his last book. He died as it was being translated for us.
This work in particular is, I think, one of the most lucid books on cinema art ever written and the very antithesis of Eisenstein's intellectual complexity and difficult style. Nevertheless, he and Eisenstein were both travelling to the same goal, towards an aesthetic of film art.
The significant thing that Bela Balazs makes clear is the importance of theory and the lack of appreciation of this in relation to 'the only new art' — the film. The most important of the arts' Lenin called it in 1919, pronouncing an axiom which the Americans have been acting on for a long time! Balazs pointed out in his earlier books that we have an unprecedented opportunity to study the laws governing the evolution of an art in the making. It is an art that could only have been born in an industrial civilization and the universality of the film is primarily due to economic causes. The making of a film is so expensive that only very few nations have a home market sufficient for their productions. Added to this factor, of course, is the ideological one. The American film industry, for example is not only U.S.A.'s fourth largest industry but also the Fourth Arm of the State!
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