Bela Balazs has been known chiefly for writing the first systematic treatise on film aesthetics. As this comprehensive and definitive biography reveals, however, he was also an important creative force, who conducted dialogues or collaborated with many masters of the new art--from Alexander Korda to G. W. Pabst, from Sergei Eisenstein to Leni Riefenstahl. Jewish by descent, Hungarian poet, German writer, and international cineast, Balazs was an artist, a revolutionary, and a humanist--a key European cultural figure.

Joseph Zsuffa's biography, based on more than two decades of research, traces the vast social upheavals of Balazs's lifetime--from the romantic years of the Austro-Hungarian fin de siècle to World War I, revolution, and political exile; from the turbulence of Weimar Germany to Hitler's Reich, Stalin's Soviet Union, and World War II's remaking of Europe. Through his art and his criticism, Balazs was both a chronicler of his times and an inspirational force for many famous contemporaries. Those he inspired or who praised the various facets of his kaleidoscopic talent included Zoltan Kodaly, Bela Bartok, Gyorgy Lukacs, Ernst Krenek, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, and Stefan Zweig.

While Zsuffa conveys the immense variety and power of Balazs's work, he also gives full treatment to Balazs's personal life that reads like a suspenseful novel. Until recently, Balazs has been more acknowledged than understood, more cited than read. This superb biography, based on impeccable scholarship, gives Balazs, who was truly a modern Renaissance man, his due at last.