With Siegfried Kracauer, the relationship of cinema to philosophy is peculiar. From his reviews and essays on modern culture to his books written in America, Kracauer's cinema theory is not primarily about films, film-makers, cultures or media technologies. Rather, cinema is itself something comparable to philosophy; as Kracauer describes, it is “an approach to the world, a mode of human existence” (1960: li). He conceives of cinema as a never entirely normal mode of perception, sensation, thought – and sometimes enlightenment. “All that remains of the ‘art with a difference’ in late Kracauer is the subjectivity which constitutes it” (Schlüpmann 1987: 107). In the end, Kracauer sees in, or rather through, cinema a mode of experience in rivalry with philosophy and art; he calls it “history”.

Long before cinema is history Kracauer equates it to capitalist economy: “The form of free-time busy-ness necessarily corresponds to the form of business” (1995: 325). In his 1926 essay “Cult of Distraction”, busy-ness/business – the same word Betrieb in the original – designates the fragmented mobility experienced both in film and in factory or office work.