Abstract
Romanticism, its philosophy and ideals, has long permeated the fabric of cinematic representation and its histories, attesting to the enduring influence of the movement. Yet, beyond the captivating narratives, striking visuals, and varied approaches to pleasure that filmmakers seek to portray, there lies a deeper philosophical engagement.
Will Kitchen’s Film, Negation and Freedom: Capitalism and Romantic Critique offers an original contribution to contemporary film history and screen production. Drawing on Romantic philosophy, as well as concepts of freedom and justice within film studies, culture, and visual media, Kitchen synthesizes critical theory from the Frankfurt School, Adorno’s negative dialectics, and Jacques Rancière’s writings on the politics of art cinema.
The book is structured in two main parts: the first presents a philosophical investigation into Romantic critique, while the second applies this framework to the analysis of selected film texts.
Rancière’s film theory, which bridges aesthetics and politics through his engagement with Romanticism, is central to Kitchen’s analysis. As Kir Kuiken (2016) observes, Rancière’s reading of Romanticism yields an ambivalent conception of the relationship between aesthetics and politics; an ambiguity that Kitchen explores through the Romantic dichotomy of Light and Dark. This dichotomy becomes a lens through which the political dimensions of a particular period in contemporary cinema are re-examined.
The discussion spans the transitional period between the 1960s and 1970s in Anglo-American cinema, focusing on the analysis of cinematic production through the work of two influential yet unconventional filmmakers. Lindsay Anderson (1923–1994), a British director and leading figure of the British New Wave and the Free Cinema movement, is best known for his Mick Travis trilogy: If . . . (1968), O Lucky Man! (1973), and Britannia Hospital (1982). Alongside him, Arthur Penn (1922–2010), an American filmmaker, gained critical acclaim for films such as The Miracle Worker (1962), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and Alice’s Restaurant (1969). Both directors operated as outsiders to the mainstream film industry, yet their work significantly shaped the cinematic discourse of the era.
Throughout his analysis, Kitchen highlights the indeterminacy between artistic, realist, and allegorical modes of visual representation in the political critiques articulated by both Anderson and Penn. He interrogates what makes their work distinctly Romantic beyond the more apparent cinematic features, such as aesthetic discontinuity, unconventional framing, ambiguous character motivations, and the absence of psychological depth in their protagonists. While these elements align with surface-level readings of Romanticism in cinema, evoking 19th-century fascinations with the darkly, the affective, and the multimedia spectacle, Kitchen pushes further, asking, What about the more discursive dimension? What deeper philosophical or ideological engagements with Romanticism are at play in their films?
A multifaceted approach to Romanticism is implied throughout Kitchen’s work, reflecting the term’s inherent plurality and the absence of a single, comprehensive definition, a point that has long been the subject of scholarly debate. For instance, Douglas Moggach (2016) has explored Romanticism’s political dimensions, particularly through Hegel’s diagnosis of modern freedom and the movement’s role within it, identifying both shared themes and divergences in Romantic cultural critique. Moggach also pointed to the 1960s counterculture and postmodern challenges to rational autonomy as contemporary revivals of Romantic thought, an era that coincides with the emergence of the New Wave and Free Cinema movements.
Kitchen calls for a rethinking of Romanticism beyond reductive conceptualisations. His book foregrounds the political dimension of Romanticism, somewhat aligning with Zoe Beenstock’s (2016) view that Romanticism emerged as a critique of radical transformations in political theory from the mid-17th to late 18th century, particularly the theory of the social contract.
Drawing on Rancière (2004, 2011), Kitchen uses this political dimension as a lens through which to analyse the films of Arthur Penn and Lindsay Anderson. He focuses especially on their anti-Capitalist critiques and their engagement with the development of modern audiovisual aesthetics, positioning Romanticism as a critical tool for understanding the ideological and stylistic undercurrents of their work. Kitchen’s book also draws attention to the unconventional career trajectories of both Anderson and Penn, marked by intermittent production, filmmaking as a part-time artistic pursuit, and a deliberate refusal to engage with the commercial imperative of mainstream cinema. Their work resists the commodification of film production and the logic of market-driven cinematography.
Kitchen interrogates their films through the productive tension embedded in cinematic poetics and what he describes as a conflict ‘between a desire for anti-capitalist critical autonomy as works of art and a capitalistic ethos inscribed in the commercial and explanatory logic of narrative cinema production’ (p. 22). This tension reflects the directors’ struggle to balance oppositional, critical art-making with the demands of popular appeal and audience accessibility. Their use of satire and allegory is foregrounded as distinctly Romantic modes of expression. Importantly, Kitchen notes that neither Penn nor Anderson offers a positive ideological alternative to the social injustices depicted in their films. Instead, their visual narratives often culminate in chaos, violence, and disillusionment, framed through a negative aesthetic that resists resolution and reinforces the critical stance of their work.
By relying on a corpus of analysis which consists solely of male filmmakers, the book silences women’s contributions to cinema, whether as directors, theorists, or cultural critics. It raises critical questions about whose resistance is being valorized and whose is being overlooked here. The Romantic dichotomy of Light and Dark, with its metaphysical and aesthetic overtones, is deployed without interrogation of its gendered implications, despite its historical entanglement with patriarchal structures of meaning making.
Feminist film scholars have long challenged such exclusions. Over two decades ago, Jane Gaines (2004) called for a ‘historical turn’ in feminist film studies, urging scholars to critically examine not only how women’s contributions are narrated but also how they are systematically erased. Gaines’s intervention is particularly relevant here, as Kitchen’s framework implicitly reproduces a canon that privileges male creativity and political agency. Judith Mayne (1985) similarly cautioned against the risk of romanticizing women’s exclusion from the actual production of films, arguing for sustained scholarly attention to the material conditions and aesthetic strategies of female filmmakers and producers. Mayne pointed at contradiction and tensions in classical cinema as the central terrain for feminist criticism, distinguishing between surface-level dualisms and deeper systemic oppositions. She concluded that digging into unresolved tensions, rather than reinforcing dichotomies allows feminist film criticism to address how cinema contains oppressive elements.
The absence of these perspectives in Kitchen’s book is not merely a gap in representation; it is a missed opportunity to engage with alternative modes of critique that challenge both capitalist and patriarchal logics. Women filmmakers working within or against the industry have historically negotiated the same tensions Kitchen identifies, between autonomy and commodification, realism and allegory, but often through different aesthetic and political registers. Women filmmakers whose work could serve as critical counterpoints to Kitchen’s Romantic dichotomy of Light and Dark include Barbara Loden, Elaine May, Joan Micklin Silver, Stephanie Rothman, and Claudia Weill, among others. Their work could offer vital counterpoints to the Romantic binaries Kitchen employs, reframing notions of negation and freedom through feminist lenses. For example, Loden’s Wanda is a landmark of feminist cinema, portraying a woman’s alienation and marginalization in working-class America. The film’s realist aesthetic and refusal to romanticize its protagonist offer a stark contrast to the heroic male figures in Penn’s and Anderson’s films. Loden’s work exemplifies a feminist mode of negation, one that critiques both capitalism and patriarchy through more intimate, embodied storytelling.
Moreover, the rhetorical structure of Light and Dark Romanticism itself invites feminist deconstruction. These categories, steeped in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought, often carry gendered associations: Light with reason, clarity, and masculinity; Dark with emotion, mystery, and femininity. Kitchen’s uncritical use of this binary risks reinscribing these associations, rather than challenging them. A feminist critique would interrogate how such metaphors shape the political imaginary of resistance and whether they obscure more intersectional and embodied forms of critique.
In sum, Kitchen’s Film, Negation and Freedom offers a compelling analysis of Romanticism’s political legacy in cinema, but its conceptual and historical scope remains limited by the absence of feminist perspectives. Engaging with the historiography of women’s cinema and the gendered aesthetics of film production would not only enrich Kitchen’s framework but also expand the possibilities for understanding cinematic resistance in more inclusive and transformative ways. While Kitchen’s study contributes meaningfully to debates on cinema and critique, it remains incomplete without engaging the gendered politics of film history and theory. A feminist intervention would not only recover marginalized voices but also reframe the very terms of artistic and political negation.
