B矇la Bal獺zs's two works, Visible Man (1924) and The Spirit of Film (1930), are published here for the first time in full English translation. The essays offer the reader an insight into the
work of a film theorist whose German-language publications have been hitherto unavailable to the film studies audience in the English-speaking world. Bal獺zs's detailed analyses of the close-up,
the shot, and montage are illuminating both as still applicable models for film analysis, and as historical documents of his key contribution, alongside such contemporaries as Arnheim,
Kracauer, and Benjamin, to critical debate on film in the ��olden age��of the Weimar silents.
