Author. He was a Hungarian film critic, writer and poet, who was born Herbert Béla Bauer of Jewish ancestry. He received recognition mainly in the German-speaking world. He studied Hungarian and German in school. In 1909 his first drama "Doctor Margit Szélpál," was performed by the Hungarian National Theatre. In 1924 he wrote his first film "Der Sichtbare Mensch" ("The Visible Man"). He then helped Leni Riefenstahl direct her first film, "Das Blaue Licht" in 1932. One of his best-known films is "Somewhere in Europe" written in 1947. The American version was written in 1949 and known as "It Happened in Europe." His collection of poems, "Tomorrow," were based on folksongs. He wrote the poetic fairy plays "The Wooden Prince" and "Bluebeard's Castle," and the music for the plays was composed by his colleague Béla Bartók and produced by the Budapest Opera. "Bluebeard's Castle" was produced for a video in 2022 as well as several other of his productions being adapted to television in the 21st century. He is credited with bit acting parts in three films. He received many awards for his writing accomplishments, including the Hungarian Kossuth Prize in 1948. His textbook, "Theory of the Film," was published in English posthumously in 1949. For political reasons of being a committed Marxist, he went into exile from Hungry, spending more than 20 years in Austria, Germany and the USSR. He went to the USSR in 1931 to teach in a university and was there until the end of World War II. He returned to Hungary after the war to help rebuild the film industry. He married twice, Edit Olga Hajós, who he divorced in 1917 and married Anna Hamvassy, who was his wife for thirty years. A filmmaker's studio in Budapest was named in his honor.