ABSTRACT
In the beginning is the darkness of the projection. Early film theorists, for instance Münsterberg, Mauerhofer, Kracauer, or Arnheim, 1 analyzed the strange state that spectators indulge in as part of film perception. Since the shutter strobes the projected beam in an established rhythm while the Geneva drive intermittently transmits individual frames, moviegoers are sitting in darkness for nearly half of the projection time, while their optical nerves are stimulated to the beat of these mechanics. Hugo Münsterberg was the first to draw the parallels between film perception and experiments of isolated acts of perception in psychological laboratories. Hugo Mauerhofer, a psychologist, biographer of Hesse, and emigré in exile in Britain, analyzed the transformation in psychic reception behavior of moviegoers in four phases, diagnosing a state similar to that of daydreaming. According to Mauerhofer, the only proper object of scientific film theory is the psyche itself, since every film critique, due to unconscious perception in the cinema, is nothing more than a more or less inept report about individual fantasies. 2
