Cinema Stories

German filmmaker and novelist Kluge turned 75 this year, and will be honored at the Venice Film Festival. His aphoristic, anecdotal, not-quite-fictional ""stories,"" most less than a page long, seek to encapsulate film's enigmatic essence. At one moment, Kluge finds that film, like music, inveigles an audience into believing in a larger world. At another, he quotes the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas in suggesting that the cinema offers ""an indication of 'blind happiness'"": as the news spread throughout the first part of the 20th century, ""the indication that there could be such moments at all is sufficient to justify the founding of a new medium."" The mysterious drug death of silent superstar Olive Thomas, Kluge's 1950s meetings with Fritz Lang (the ""blind director"") and an envisioning of the end of cinema are all here. While not on par with Robert Bresson's Notes on the Cinematographer, Kluge's book will appeal to anyone interested in 20th century film.