Béla Balázs

Film theorist, playwright, novelist, critic, philosopher, politician, poet. Born 1884 in Szeged to German-born parents. 1902 moves to Budapest to study Hungarian and German at the Eötvös Collegium. Lectured in IT, CS, PL, YU, FR.Since 1904 travels extensively in Europe, well known in Viennese intellectual circles. Works with Bartók as a librettist for opera Bluebeard's Castle and ballet The Wooden Prince. 1918-19 political and cultural organiser at Hungarian communist republic. Late November 1919 fleeds to Vienna; 1920 his play Deadly Youth performed there; regularly meets in Cafe Filmhof with emigres Alexander Korda, Michael Curtiz, Ladislaus Vajda, Ladislaus Biro, Bela Lugosi. 1921 novels On God's Hand and Beyond the Body (Diary of a Man and a Woman). Speaks about film art as "the greatest instrument of mass influence ever devised in the whole course of human cultural history" and considers the cinematic education of the audience--teaching the public how to appreciate film art--of utmost importance. Since 1922 film column in Der Tag daily owned by an apolitical stockmarket speculator Bosel; 1924 collected as The Visible Man, or Film Culture [Der Sichtbare Mensch], which helped found the German "film as language" theory. 1922 The Theory of the Drama. Co-written number of scripts; film criticism, play and book reviews, art-philosophical studies and literary essays for journals internationally (est. a thousand articles between 1919 and 1931). 1925 The Visible Man translated to Russian by Pietrovsky, the artistic director of Sovkino; after which he keeps in close touch with Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Lebedjev, and Eisenstein. Urged by his Russian friends and the German filmmakers in 1926 he moves to Berlin after Bosel bankrupts and the new management of Der Tag is not reconcilable to Balazs's radical culture-political ideas. Writes for Die Rote Fahne, the leftist paper of the German workers' movement. UFA production company offers him a contract, but he declines it, due to a growing antagonism between leftist artists and UFA's program policies. Artistic director of a vast nonprofessional radical, 10,000 members strong theater organization Arbeitertheaterbund (Worker's Theatrical Association); working side by side with Piscator and Brecht he writes and directs a number of one-act plays. For three and a half years edits the journal of the workers' theater, published at his own cost. 1929 writes open letter in Film-Kurier warning the Russian filmmakers not to relinquish their thriving for excellence. 1930 The Spirit of Film, his second major theoretical work; analyzes the beneficial and detrimental effects of new techniques upon the film as art, and warns against the potentially domineering role of sound. 1931 spends a few months working with Leni Riefenstahl on co-writing (with Carl Mayer) and co-directing her The Blue Light film; she later removed his and Mayer's name from credits because they were Jewish. Summer 1931 receives invitation from the Soviet Union, Riefenstahl declines his offer to join him (later reads Mein Kampf, meets Hitler and changes her political views), Balázs leaves in September. 1945 leaves Soviet Union. 1949 finishes Theory of the Film published posthumously in English, 1952. 1949 dies in Budapest. 1958 Béla Balázs Studio and Prize founded.