[1] Originally given as an informal talk in 1934 to a group of Princeton University students in the process of founding the film archive of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the essay was subsequently published in revised and expanded form in 1936,[2] 1937,[3] and 1947,[4] and has been widely anthologized ever since.
[7] Insisting that film originally drew its form in nineteenth-century painting, postcards, waxworks, comic strips, and its subject matter from popular songs, pulp magazines, and dime novels, Panofsky argues that the film medium originally “appealed directly and very intensely to a folk art mentality” by satiating its appetite for “justice and decorum,” violence, crude humor, and pornography.
"[9] According to Panofsky, these qualities distinguished film from theater, as did the “principle of coexpressibility” which, during the sound era, entails the integration of the dialogue with the facial expressions of the actors framed in close-up shots.
[10] Panofsky goes on to argue that the films produced between 1900 and 1910 established the subject matter and methods of the movies up to the essay’s publication.
[11] Panofsky ultimately asserts that the cinema’s unique “problem is to manipulate and shoot unstylized reality in such a way that the result has style.