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Social impact of the first world war
German expressionism characteristics
Social impact of the first world war
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During the early 20th Century, around the 1920’s, Germany were no doubtedly a country in turmoil and embarrassment, struggling to cope with the aftermath of the first world war. Because this was happening, and with German’s feeling the shame and guilt, wanted a change to how things worked in Germany. The historical context that relates to Germany and when German cinema started, had an impact on the film style that films were made in. The culture of Germany grew though in the 1920’s, and cinemas were seen as a place to escape to and help restore the German’s national pride after the war. There are two films that will be in discussion throughout this essay, one is ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ (Wiene, 1920) and the other is ‘Nosferatu’ (Murnau, 1922) both being made and directed within the times of many historical events happening within Germany. …show more content…
Expressionism is the persistence of vision and was embraced through art and also literature. The way to understand German films include elements of Expressionism is through the key tenets that help make up German Expressionist films. These tenets are; Criticism of authority, fascination with the occult, diagonal composition, privileging of the subjective point of view over the objective, grotesque appearance and chiaroscuro (which is the use of shadows). There are definitely uses of chiaroscuro and diagonal composition that are included in both, ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ and ‘Nosferatu’. There are also elements of criticism of authority in ‘The Cabinet of Dr.
The first movie I would like to concentrate on is the film that is considered to have started the development of the genre – M by Fritz Lang (1931). Born in Germany and originally starting his career there, Fritz Lang shot this film in Germany as well, before moving to the U.S. later in life. This film was also later translated in the United States in 1933 (Garncarz 219-25). Although, earlier in the 20th century Hollywood had already produced a number of films that had similar features to “film noir” (among them are Nosferatu (1922) and Sunrise (1927)), but which still were shot more in the stylistic traditions of horror (Wexman 49). This film (M (1931)) was also the first one to start a whole line of black and white movies with similar characteristics and techniques used in them. Although color movies have already taken their established place in the film industry, the decision to shoot films in black and white was a creative technique that provided films with a certain atmosphere and allowed using more denominated shadows and light accents. Everything in this film, from complex, maze-like narrative which includes crime, police and court and leitmotif as a background music to the shadows on the columns and in the windows and simple shots that presuppose something horrifying. Lang also explores an unsavory subject in his work which is now considered one of the features of “film noir” (Brégent‐Heald 125-38). M’s plot and narrative shifts from protagonist’s to antagonist’s point of view (the viewpoint of Hans and the cops trying to catch him), blurring the boundary between
Revolutionary forms of art have dominated much of Germany, apparently as a reaction to the First World War. The era in which the First World War took place – throughout the 1910s, featured artists coming together against what they think the pointless aggression said major conflict brought. German artists, in particular, protested against the social structures prevalent during the 1910s, within which the social structures of the Second Reich were prevalent. German society initially saw film, in particular, as quite an inelegant alternative to the bourgeoisie-associated theater. Such is due to the inability of the domestic film industry in Germany to develop films due to two reasons – the mass importation of foreign films from other nations with more advanced film industries and the consequent notion that films are associated with the lower classes (Kellner 3-39). Such impressions, however, changed with the rise of German expressionist film, with the seminal example being The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari by Robert Wiene.
Classic film noir originated after World War II. This is the time where post World War II pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion was taking the world by storm. Many films that were released in the U.S. Between 1939s and 1940s were considered propaganda films that were designed for entertainment during the Depression and World War II. During the 1930s many German and Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and helped the American film industry with powerf...
The German Expressionism was a period that came following the devastation of World War I, it came when the people of Germany needed something to claim as their own. The expressionism movement gave Germany just that; it helped them not only in the filmmaking industry, but also in their personal lives. The German Expressionism changed the way we look at and view films. The German Expressionism altered, for the better, the way that films were made back then and the way that they are made today.
Black smoke stained the sky and scarlet blood darkened the earth, as global war, once again, ravaged twentieth-century society. The repercussions of the Second World War rippled across the Atlantic and spread like an infectious disease. As the morality of humankind appeared to dissipate with each exploding bomb, anxiety, frustration, and hopelessness riddled the American public and began to spill into the art of New York City’s avant-garde (Paul par. 4). By the mid-1940s, artists reeling from the unparalleled violence, brutality, and destruction of war found a shared “vision and purpose” in a new artistic movement: Abstract Expressionism (Chave 3). Critics considered the most prominent artists of the movement to comprise the New York School
The film illustrates the common social and sexual anxieties that the Germans were undergoing at that period of time. It also employs cinematic aesthetics alongside with new technology to create what would be considered as one of Germany’s first sound-supported films. Furthermore, it was the film that popularized its star Marlene Dietrich. The film is also known for combining elements of earlier expressionist works into its setting without becoming an expressionist film itself. It is important also to point out that the visual element has helped to balance the film easily against the backdrop the nightclub lifestyle that Lola leads the professor to fall into.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
It was a full 170 years after Americans had their political revolution that they won an aesthetic revolution. American art to get rid of its inhibiting mechanisms- provincialism, over-dependence on European sources, and an indifferent public- and liberate itself into a quality and expressive force equal to, or exceeding that of art produced anywhere within the period. Few would argue that the painting and sculpture that emerged from the so-called New York School in the mid 1940s was the foremost artistic phenomenon of its time and was labeled as the Abstract Expressionist movement. Abstract expressionism was a reaction to social realism, surrealism, and primitive art in the 1940s; this is a turning point in American art history because it caused the rest of the art world to recognize New York as the new center of innovation.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920’s German silent-horror film. Robert Weine, the director, collaborated with the German cinematographer, Willy Hameister to create this German Expressionist masterpiece. The idea was taken from the screenplay written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Meyer. It is also considered one of the greatest horror films during the silent period. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and its historical context in terms of the German Expressionist movement will be discussed further in the essay.
An obvious difference in these films is that the 1931 version played to a Depression audience and that the Coppola version played to a modern audience. (I am being extremely careful because, obviously, the 1931 audience was modern in 1931; however, we like to think of ourselves as being more modern than past generations. There are differences in the audiences which viewed the respective versions in their time, and I hope to prove this point as the paper unfolds.)
Where Schlondorff, Wenders, Herzog, Fassbinder and Kluge once investigated the extremities of the German character and the Americana that infested West German culture through the New German Cinema of the late 60s, 70s and early 80s, the Germany of today has through its cinema acknowledged past hardships but with a more positive emphasis placed on the possibilities of forgiveness, redemption and hope for what can be made of tomorrow. Bibliography A Reversal of Fortunes? Women, work and change in East Germany. Rachel Alsop.
Art has been always seen as a form to express self emotions and ideas; an artist creates an idea and shapes it by culturally known objects and forms to send encrypted message. Through the times both, ideas and materials used, separates art in to different periods and movements. In late 40’s and late 50’s two art and culture movements emerged, one from another. The first one, Lettrism, was under the aspiration to rewrite all human knowledge. From it another movement, Situationism, appeared. It was an anti-art movement which sought for Cultural Revolution. Both of these movements belong to wide and difficulty defined movement of experiment, a movement whose field is endless. Many different people create experimental films because of the variety of reasons. Some wishes to express their viewpoints which are unconventional. But most of them have an enthusiasm for medium itself. They yearn to explore what prospects the medium has and wishes to open new opportunities to create and to explore, as well as to educate. Experimental filmmaker, differently from mainstream filmmakers, wishes to step out from the orthodox notions. The overall appreciation is not the aim that the experimental filmmakers would seek for. Experimenters usually work on the film alone or with a small group, without the big budget. They intend to challenge the traditional ideas. And with intention to do so Lettrism tries to narrow the distance between the poetry and people’s lives, while Situationism tries to transform world into one that would exist in constant state of newness. Both of these avant-garde movements root from similar sources and have similar foundations. Nonetheless, they have different intentions for the art and culture world and these movements...
Abstract Expressionism started in America as a post World War II art movement. It was the first art movement that arose from America and put New York at the center of the art world. The term Abstract Expressionism was first applied to American art in 1946 by art critic Robert Coates. It is most commanly said that Surealism is it’s predecessor because of the use of spontaneous, automatic and subconscious creations.
world as did in the Paris to New York shift of the 1940's and 1950's.
The expressionist movement in German art and cinema was very sensitive to the current state of the country after a huge worldwide conflict. Prior to the rise of the next Nazi Regime, German filmmakers incorporated many aspects to their films that had never been used together before this period of time. M is no exception to