ABSTRACT
The categorization of Rudolf Arnheim’s Film as Art (1957) as a canonical work of “classical film theory,” while pedagogically useful, has led to a kind of conceptual filtering of the author’s rich and varied contributions to the study of film and the visual arts. To be sure, Arnheim’s thesis, couched within a conception of how the formal properties of the new medium deviate from the simple mechanical transcription of reality, constitutes the core argument of his book. His concern with the artistic stature of film and the medium’s expressive qualities ally him with what Dudley Andrew terms the “formative tradition” of film theory. So too, Arnheim’s commitment to medium specificity, and exaltation of silent era cinema as paradigmatic of film art open him to charges of essentialism and historical presentism.
