Siegfried Kracauer's Theory of Film 

So many rich ideas and so well done thank you so much for doing this.., this requires multiple viewings and take notes😅😮😮

That's so great to hear - I appreciate the comment very much! Good luck with your MA!

that's great! thanks for commenting :)

A few factors contribute to the reading that Theory of Film is conservative (which is not so much a popular opinion anymore). I'll give my best shot at an explanation, but my knowledge on this question is tentative. First, once structuralist and post-structuralist thought became fashionable in the late 60s and 70s, much of philosophically informed classical film theory, especially realist film theory, was looked at with suspicion. So Bazin's writing was in this sense as much a target as Kracauer's Theory of Film. The core accusation was a "naive realism," an unchecked assumption that the photographic apparatus can grant access to "reality." This was looked at with suspicion given how much of structuralist and post-structuralist thought was concerned with how ideology blocks our access to reality, or the "real" or actual conditions of existence. So any film theory that rests on some idea that there is some accessible "reality" out there that can be revealed with the camera seemed not only naive, but dangerous. So these theories might have been regarded as "conservative" not because they advocated for recognizably conservative values in film storytelling, but because the premise of their realist film theoretical position was based on the status quo assumption that "reality" is accessible. A reason why Theory of Film in particular might be called conservative is that it is so different from Kracauer's early writings, which were markedly political and clearly associated with the political thought of the Frankfurt School. It's clear that Adorno's critique of Kracauer rests on this shift. Beyond this, Kracauer's Theory of Film also exhibits a kind of nostalgia in its rhetoric. There's a sense of romantic longing for "reality" in his writing that often stands as a substitute for rigorous argumentation or, as you'll get more so in Bazin, poetic obfuscation that might be said to harbor philosophical density. But the more contemporary take is that this reading itself is a bit superficial.

@@filmandmediastudieschannel okay Thanks for such a detailed explanation