Földvári Books

Theoretical work by Balázs

Balázs, Béla

Dramaturgia. Az elsö szemeszter folyamán elöadta --. (Elöadások a Szellemi Tudományok Köréböl 2.) / Dramaturgia. Az első szemeszter folyamán előadta --. (Előadások a Szellemi Tudományok Köréből 2.) [Dramaturgy. --’s Lectures in the First Semester. (Lectures on the “sciences of spirit” 2.)]

Budapest: Benkő Gyula (Rovó Aladár), 1918. First edition. With printed dedication to Georg (György) Lukács. In original paper. 47, (1) p. Cover damaged at extremities and on spine, otherwise in good condition.

Balázs’ theoretical book on theatre, an antecedent to his books about film.

This treatise was originally written to be lectured on a series of public talk that was held by the “Vasárnapi Kör” (Sunday Circle), a group of progressive intellects in Hungary. Beside Balázs and others Béla Bartók, Georg (György) Lukács and Károly Mannheim held lectures at these events. Only two of them appeared in print, this pamphlet and Mannheim’s presentation.

Béla Balázs (1884–1949) was a Hungarian-Jewish film critic, aesthete, writer and poet. He is known as the librettist of Béla Bartók’s “Bluebeard's Castle” and the writer of the scenario for Bartók’s ballet “The Wooden Prince”. During his university studies in Budapest he became close friend to Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bartók and Georg (György) Lukács. He continued his studies in Paris and Berlin where he attended Georg Simmel’s lectures. In World War I he volunteered for the Hungarian army and served at the front. After the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 he fled to Vienna where he started to write film reviews for the newspaper “Der Tag”. His first book on film, “Der Sichtbare Mensch” (The Visible Man) was published in this period in Vienna in 1924. The book had influence on Russian film makers such as Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin. His second book on film “Der Geist des Films” was published in Berlin, where he moved in 1926. Balázs wrote the screenplay for G. W. Pabst’s film of “Die Dreigroschenoper”, and worked together with Leni Riefenstahl making the film “Das Blaue Licht”. In the early 1930’s he was invited to Moscow to make a movie about the Hungarian Revolution in 1919. He stayed in the Soviet Union, taught film aesthetics at Moscow’s State Film Institute until 1945 when he returned to Budapest. He was involved rebuilding the film industry, started to teach at the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts. His last work was the screenplay of Géza von Radványi’s film “Valahol Európában” (It Happened in Europe) in 1948.

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Price: €350.00