This draft of an aesthetic theory of film takes the history of visual art as its point of departure. It considers the contradictions between the two fields that have grown since the nineteenth century and been overtly manifest since Dada and Bauhaus. Since then, different theories of aesthetics have stood side by side, separated by deep rifts because each is confined to different artistic practices. The following essay will consider three approaches: that of Theodor W. Adorno (who excluded cinema from the realm of art), Walter Benjamin (who recognized in film a new art form), and Erwin Panofsky (an art historian who welcomed film as a new living art genre). In the light of these different approaches, it emerges that there is a striking divergence between the art worlds on either side of the Atlantic, caused primarily by the wave of emigration during the Nazi era. While the Museum of Modern Art in New York has a film department dedicated to film, German art museums still refuse to embrace this genre.