ABSTRACT
To the question of where one might find a place in contemporary film theory for Hugo Münsterberg's The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (2002 [1916]), the answer at the most fundamental level has to be “nowhere.” The early contribution to film theory of this distinguished German-American philosopher and psychologist might well have remained entirely tucked away in the shadow of history had it not been brought back into partial view by the development of cognitive film theory during the last twenty-five years. Some scholars involved in this latter endeavor see in Münsterberg's 1916 text as an insightful precursor and ally to their own interest in discovering the ways in which processes of the mind that are available for conscious reflection and empirical research interactively inform our perception and apperception of the conceptual, affective, and formal registers of film.
