A tizenegyedik óra előtt. Balázs Béla, a marxista
Before the Eleventh Hour: Béla Balázs, the Marxist

Summary/Abstract: Béla Balázs’s Marxism – so the predominant majority of his interpreters – is seemingly conjured up at the end of his 1924 book, The Visible Man, just to fulfil his duty towards the old comrades from the Party. Balázs was – again, seemingly – never able to overtly brake up with this urge to compensate his bourgeois worldview. Accordingly, his film-books are a documents of his reluctance to embrace politically activist Marxism. A closer look reveals that in The Visible Man Balázs is literally framing his early film theory through Marxism. In this study, I will list and comment on the keywords and phrases which support a Marxist way of interpretation. On my account, there are dozens of sections in The Spirit of Film which do not only have Marxist overtones, but a general Marxist outlook, conceding that his film theory is a legitimate form of doing classical interpretive Marxism in the genre of concise, journalistic essays. All of them are following, for better or worse, The Visible Man’s ideological framework.

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