Film theory is too often approached as gimmick that novice critic needs before becoming fully fledged, rather than sum of lifetime of critical insights. For film theory, in specific sense, to be anything more than an eccentric plaything small circle of film scholars, it must be applicable to as many kinds of and film makers as possible; any narrower insight will distort more than it illuminates. Siegfried Kracauer's Theory of Film is not only narrow, it is also obscure, contradictory, and misleading. Film, Kracauer says, renders visible what we did not, or perhaps even could not, see before its advent. It effectively assists us in discovering material world with its psychophysical correspondences. We literally redeem this world from its dormant state, its state of virtual nonexistence, by endeavoring to experience it through cinema. This power of cinema is familiarized through Kracauer's voyeuristic catch-phrases life in raw and caught in act. Cinematic films-that is, those devoted to physical reality-and film camera are living beings to Kracauer. He writes that films gravitate towards unstaged reality, that such-and-such shows an affinity cinematic medium, that the medium has always shown predilection for such-and-such. He talks about a task film camera has never disowned, the medium's declared preference nature in raw, and my favorite, the camera's ingrained desire indefinite rambling. He talks to films: not only do they listen to him, but they tell him about their devotions, gravitations, affinities, predilections, preferences and desires. Kracauer's theory is based on this syllogism: originated in photography (major premise); photography physical reality (minor premise); therefore, (should) portray physical reality (conclusion). This reasoning would please Zeno more than Plato. First, cinema, like photography, uses film; but it also makes use of movement, editing, sound and color. Kracauer's rebuttal, that these aspects are technical, not basic, is lame. Second, as Kracauer admits, even in primitive photography there were two strains, or theories: realistic (which is good, of course) and artistic (bad). The history of photography has favored latter strain. How much modem photography portrays physical reality?