ABSTRACT
In Theory of Film, Siegfried Kracauer argues that film has a unique relationship to the contingent features of the world. In some passages, Kracauer uses the example of the wind blowing through the leaves to stand for these contingencies. Since no filmmaker could possibly predict or orchestrate all the subtle movements of every rustling leaf, anyone who points a camera at a tree must accept the fact that the subject will ultimately elude the filmmaker’s complete control. With this example, the contingent is presented as an inescapable fact of nature. Elsewhere, Kracauer proposes a different model of contingency-a model that places contingency at the center of modern life:
Here, Kracauer returns to an idea that had originally appeared in his writings from the 1920s: the idea that chance plays a particularly significant role in the modern world, with the unpredictable masses reshaping the spaces of the city.2
