As far as I could make out, Kaufs effort seems to be to try and fit a theoretical framework around the entire development of cinema uptil the present. He wishes to do this by analysing the psychological impact of its different components separately, and then to relate their functions to the medium's total impact It is true that some fine insights occur in places, as when the author introduces Wilfred Bion's definitions of perceived past (a store of sensual objects) and future (a conjunction of sensually satisfying objects) and future (a WTiiWi^WYi ^ ^tT^Y^ ^^yiT^ o\^te). %^\ \te tepTopoTtionate^ ambitious scope of KauFs investigation leads him to postulute innumerable sub-classifications at every step, leading in turn to definitions of the sort quoted above. It appears Kaul ultimately wants to reach an understanding of what the basic aims of the medium should and can be. It would be a hard task for a whole book; much more so for the six or so pages he attem'pts it in. 1. Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media, New American Library, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964. See esp. reference to J. Wilson and the African Institute's experiment with African film audiences in chapter 29. 2. Wemer Herzog, quoted in John Sandford, The New German Cinema, Mimeograph, Max Mueller Bhawan, New Delhi, 1983. 3. McLuhan, Understanding Media^ p. 38. 4. Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock, Paladin, Granda Publishing, London. 1978, p. 333. 5. Ibid. p. 402. 6. I am thinking of another master of fantasy and realism, although of an entirely different kind from Hitchcock: Andrei Tarkovsky, particularly in his later films. The Mirror, and Stalker. Other directors with this kind of highly personal vision who come to mind are Kubrick, Fellini, Jansco, and Angelopolous. 7. For a typical example of such misapplication of analytical techniques see Veena Das The Mythological Film and its Framework of Meaning and Sidhartha Basu et al., 'Cinema and Society: A Search for Meaning in a New Genre' in India International Quarterly, Vol. 8, No.l., 1981. Both pieces presume to use complex technical methods to arrive at-relatively trivial com-monsense conclusions. 8. Charles Marowitz. Plays and Players. Issue 355. April 1983, p. 39. 9. Quoted in Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973, p. 274. Journal of Arts and Ideas 33