This seminar will explore the effort, in Weimar writing on film and film production itself, to raise the status of cinema from a low-brow mass entertainment medium to a visual art form worthy to stand alongside traditional painting. As Rudolf Arnheim argued in Film als Kunst (1931), "in film one continues to work with the means and devices of traditional art, [and] one can speak just as seriously about Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, editing, and panning as one does about Titian, Cezanne, Baroque and pleinairism." The seminar will focus precisely on this constitution of film as a primarily visual medium, in which, to paraphrase Arnheim again, the most profound spiritual content is conveyed by light, framing, physiognomy, and editing rather than by the word or the story line, which, it was conceded, often approached kitsch. Topics will include: "Expressionism" in film, the return of physiognomy, set design, the transition from silent film to sound film. During the first half of the semester there will be weekly readings in both German and English, hence a good reading knowledge of German is a prerequisite for enrollment. Requirements: students will be responsible for leading class discussion of selected readings, an oral report, to be presented in revised, written form at semester's end, and a 10-minute critical commentary on another student's oral report. Enrollment limit: 10.