LukáCsian Film Theory and Cinema

Ian Aitken is Professor of Film Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University

• Introduction1.The early aesthetic and ‘Thoughts Towards an Aestheticfor the Cinema’ (‘Gedanken zu einer Ästhetic des Kino’)2.Narrate or Describe? Lukács’ literary ‘typology’3.Lukács’ late aesthetic and film theory: The Specificity of the Aesthetic (Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen)4.The late writings on film, socialist humanism, and Toward the Ontology of Social Being (Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftslichen Seins)5.Lukácsian aesthetic and cinematic realism6.The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) (1963)7.Thoughts Towards an Aesthetic of the Cinema8.Film9.Blue Devil or Yellow Devil?10.Cultural Manipulation and the Role of Critics11.Film, Ideology and the Cult of Personality12.Technique, Content, and the Problem of Language13.The Expression of Thought in the Cinema14Revolution, and the Psychology of Everyday LifeConclusionsBibliography

"Aitken has done a brilliant job in articulating Luka´cs’s contributions to film in Luka´csian Film Theory to the extent that I would deem it absolutely essential to read Aitken’s contextualizing chapters alongside the pieces written by Luka´cs himself." (Richard Rushton, The Years Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, 22, April 2014)‘What makes Aitken’s analysis peculiar is the seriousness and consistency with which he delves into Lukács’ philosophical and political universe. He explicitly takes the time to unravel the philosophical framework through which the aesthetic notions are then analysed. The filmic medium is thus understood for itself, in its own terms, but also as embedded in a complex of conceptual relations exceeding it. Hence, his book not only gives a comprehensive insight into Lukács’ original thinking and the way he correlates politics, philosophy, art and film, but also an illustration of the fruitfulness and the need of trespassing (while respecting at the same time) the intellectual division of labour in the analysis of specific art forms, particularly the filmic medium.’Stefanie Baumann (IFILNOVA)