Kafka Goes to the Movies
Translated by Susan H. Gillespie
143 pages
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92 duotones
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6 x 9
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© 2002
"Went to the movies. Wept. Matchless entertainment." So wrote Franz Kafka in one of his diaries, giving us but one hint of his little-known passion for the cinema. Until now, Kafka aficionados have been left to speculate about which films moved Kafka so powerfully and how those films might have influenced his writing. With Kafka Goes to the Movies, German actor and film director Hanns Zischler draws on years of detective work to provide the first account of Kafka's moviegoing life.
Since many of Kafka's visits to the cinema occurred during bachelor trips with Max Brod, Zischler's research took him not only to Kafka's native Prague but to film archives in Munich, Milan, and Paris. Matching Kafka's cinematic references to reviews and stills from daily papers, Zischler hunted down rare films in collections all across Europe. A labor of love, then, by a true man of the cinema, Kafka Goes to the Movies brims with discoveries about the pioneering years of European film. With a wealth of illustrations, including reproductions of movie posters and other rare materials, Zischler opens a fascinating window onto movies that have been long forgotten or assumed lost.
But the real highlights of the book are those about Kafka himself. Long considered one of the most enigmatic figures in literature, the Kafka that emerges in this work is strikingly human. Kafka Goes to the Movies offers an absorbing look at a witty, passionate, and indulgently curious writer, one who discovered and used the cinema as a place of enjoyment and escape, as a medium for the ambivalent encounter with modern life, and as a filter for the changing world around him.
Since many of Kafka's visits to the cinema occurred during bachelor trips with Max Brod, Zischler's research took him not only to Kafka's native Prague but to film archives in Munich, Milan, and Paris. Matching Kafka's cinematic references to reviews and stills from daily papers, Zischler hunted down rare films in collections all across Europe. A labor of love, then, by a true man of the cinema, Kafka Goes to the Movies brims with discoveries about the pioneering years of European film. With a wealth of illustrations, including reproductions of movie posters and other rare materials, Zischler opens a fascinating window onto movies that have been long forgotten or assumed lost.
But the real highlights of the book are those about Kafka himself. Long considered one of the most enigmatic figures in literature, the Kafka that emerges in this work is strikingly human. Kafka Goes to the Movies offers an absorbing look at a witty, passionate, and indulgently curious writer, one who discovered and used the cinema as a place of enjoyment and escape, as a medium for the ambivalent encounter with modern life, and as a filter for the changing world around him.
Theatre Library Association: George Freedley Memorial Award
Short Listed
Theatre Library Association: Richard Wall Memorial Award (TLA Book Award)
Short Listed
"This is what finally makes this book . . . so curiously seductive. Kafka brings so much neurasthenic energy to bear on such trivial matters--so much quivering intelligence at war with so much dither--that he becomes quite an engaging, sympathetic, even faintly comic figure, particularly since during this period (roughly 1908-13) he was writing (and destroying) the first draft of 'Amerika,' finishing 'Metamorphosis' and engaging in his largely epistolary, entirely ambiguous, courtship of Felice Bauer. . . . Watching Kafka emerge--forgive the comparison--is worth a thousand disquisitions on popcorn culture."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Brings an altogether fresh perspective to the life of Kafka, always an absorbing subject, and offers a fine look at a fascinating era in cinematic history."—Library Journal, Starred Review
"Zischler was working on a TV film about Kafka, when he noticed scattered references to the cinema in early diaries and letters: 'Afternoon, Palestine film'; 'This evening. . . Cinematograph at the Landestheater.' Poring through cinema programmes, unearthing the silent films Kafka watched, Zischler has fleshed these allusions out, creating a cineaste's collage, studded with pictures from early-twentieth-century billboards."—The Observer (U.K.)
"Kafka Goes to the Movies is a charmingly eccentric little work of obsession. If it makes no grand statements about Kafka as an author, it offers illuminating details about Kafka as a man of his time, trying to escape through entertainment and trying to move from a 19th- to a 20th- century mode of seeing. It also reminds us that high- and lowbrow culture were closely connected long before authors like David Foster Wallace."—New York Times Book Review
"The premise is beguiling: if you know Kafka's taste in movies, you might just know the man. Zischler, a film actor and writer, spent years researching the films Kafka watched after Prague got its first cinema, in 1907. Zischler's detective work is impressive, bringing to light a wealth of movie posters, reviews, and stills, which he juxtaposes with Kafka's journals and letters. . . . His notion that movies were a place where Kafka could indulge his 'wish for unselfconscious loneliness' is appealing, as is the thought of the writer taking a well-earned break from his nightmare imaginings."—The New Yorker
"[Zischler] has shown remarkable enterprise and tenacity in tracking down prints of the films Kafka saw....The illustrations he has assembled are in themselves something to treasure. Enthusiasts for Kafka and for early cinema alike will remain in his debt."—London Review of Books
"The German version of Hanns Zischler's Kafka Goes to the Movies, first published in 1996, already enjoys the status of a classic, and is now ably translated by Susan H. Gillespie. His book is packed with discoveries, including reproductions of stills, placards, kiosks and cinemas, wonderfully evoking the early days of the new medium, and the world as Kafka saw it. Yet despite his doggedness as a researcher, as an entertainer Zischler knows exactly how to amuse. He frequently remains wisely reticent, never allowing his thoroughness to obscure the charm and mystery of his theme."—Times Literary Supplement
"This valuable little book gives us a Kafka firmly situated in his time and merely deepens the mystery of his remarkable work."—Bookforum
"Zischler has produced a book to read, leaf through, linger over, gaze at, and watch. It surely would have enchanted Kafka himself."—Badische Zeitung
Contents
Preface
The Audience
The Explainer
Les Correspondences Douloureuses, or the Pavement Pounder
The Kaiser Panorama
That White Slave Girl Again
Paris in Dotted Lines, or the Theft of the Mona Lisa
Entr'acte
Torn Away, or Lützow's Wild Chase
The Arbitrary Example, or The Other
An Invisible Sight, or The Heartbreaker
The Movie Queen
The Light...the Screen...Slaves of Gold
Au Revoir and Déjà Vu
Boundless Entertainment
Afternoon, Palestine Film
Postscript
Notes
Brief Filmography
Illustation Credits
Index
The Audience
The Explainer
Les Correspondences Douloureuses, or the Pavement Pounder
The Kaiser Panorama
That White Slave Girl Again
Paris in Dotted Lines, or the Theft of the Mona Lisa
Entr'acte
Torn Away, or Lützow's Wild Chase
The Arbitrary Example, or The Other
An Invisible Sight, or The Heartbreaker
The Movie Queen
The Light...the Screen...Slaves of Gold
Au Revoir and Déjà Vu
Boundless Entertainment
Afternoon, Palestine Film
Postscript
Notes
Brief Filmography
Illustation Credits
Index
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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Literature and Literary Criticism: Germanic Languages
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