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Essay of German expressionism
Silent movie era filmmaking essay
German expressionism and the types and characteristics of german expressionism
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When a person feels sad, they sit by a rainy windowsill, bathe in despondency, and belt along to Celine Dion’s 1996 hit, “All By Myself”; when they turn terrified by the circumstances surrounding them in the post-WWi era, wrought with unemployment and economic ruin, they invent art-house, pastiche horrors that influences large-scale branches of cinema. In Robert Wiene’s ground-breaking German Expressionist, Das Cabinet des Dr.Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari) (1922), and F.W. Murnau’s Expressionistic-Kammerspielfilm, Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh) (1924), a range of audience-broadening experiments are taken within silent film; rooted in the up rise of German expressionism, socio-political horrors of post-war Germany are exploited in …show more content…
The German Expressionism movement started in the early twentieth century art world, pre-WWI, presumably from Vincent Van Gogh’s “pioneering expressionist paintings like… Starry, Starry Night”(Encyclopaedia of Art History). It was a purely aesthetic movement at this time that sought to oppose the Impressionist movement, which imitated nature, by imposing unnatural, distorted images. Aspects of those distortions served to convey the emotions an artist held towards their subject. War brought terror. War brought mental meltdowns. War changed the Expressionistic style into a “bitter protest movement”(Encyclopaedia of Art History) as artists “suffered from war-induced disillusionment and were dissatisfied with post-war German …show more content…
Seen in the contrasted blacks and white in both the scenery and characters, it plays as an intensifier of emotions; the extremes of shade play on the extremes of morality, of good and evil, the known and unknown. The dark shadows serve as foreboding spaces, voids of unfamiliarity, of moral ambiguity, of uncertainty that the less appealing aspects of society live in. The light only brings out the darkness. Poe-like make-up is applied to Caligari’s actors—the heavy eyeliner, dark eye shadows, and stark-white complexions--, which exaggerated the emotions of the characters. It made the hypnotizing eyes of Cesare, the somnambulist, all the more enrapturing; the wrinkles on Dr. Caligari’s forehead became more menacing when defined. Later, Expressionist films achieved this effect through lighting techniques, but a low budget (or eccentric artistry) meant that these shadows were painted onto the architecture. This gave a severe, sharp distinction that added to the surreal atmosphere of Caligari’s tale. In the more realistic Kammerspielfilm -Expressionistic properties of The Last Laugh, elements of chiaroscuro are seen in the atmospheric lighting and framing devices; also, the use of flashlights to command attention in the darkness of to draw focus to the faces of characters occurs several times; and, i.e., as seen above, when the doorman (Emil Jannings) is told he is being replaced due to a
Calhoon, Kenneth S. “Horror vacui.” Peripheral Visions: The Hidden Stages of Weimar Cinema. Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 2001.
In Germany, the advent of sound cinema was initially dismissed as American sensation seeking. The domestic success of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930) then represents a turnabout of public sentiment. The film encapsulates the paradox of Weimar cinema as it relates to its American counterpart. While in opposition to the American industry, German cinema consistently looked to Hollywood as a point of reference and the film is a result of this. As Professor Rath is seduced in the film by the cabaret singer, Lola Lola, German audiences became seduced by the film and by the technology of sound cinema. The film is a showcase of its own technological achievement and arises from the paradoxical engagement of German with American cinema, an
The begging of World War II not only changed countries, economic structures and politics but also had an enormous influence on different sides of life of people and societies. Well-known from the historical experience is the fact that every single of such size as World War always has its resonance on arts, as culture is an inseparable part of people’s lives. Talking of WWII, the response within artistic communities was so strong that artists became a part of the ideological war of the time (Martin). The position of lots of creative people was at the same time very fearful, as they found themselves in occupied countries under the threat of totalitarian regimes and had to immigrate
Canadian filmmaker and cinephile, Guy Maddin once said, “I do feel a bit like Dracula in Winnipeg. I’m safe, but can travel abroad and suck up all sorts of ideas from other filmmakers… Then I can come back here and hoard these tropes and cinematic devices.” Here, Maddin addresses his filmmaking saying that he takes aspects from different film styles and appropriates them into his own work. In The Saddest Music in the World (2003), Maddin uses a combination of French Surrealist filmmaking and classical American Hollywood cinema, specifically melodrama, to create his own style. In an article by William Beard, Steven Shaviro talks about Maddin’s filmmaking, and he links Surrealism and melodrama together saying, “Maddin’s films are driven by a tension between romantic excess [melodrama] on the one hand and absurdist humour [Surrealism] on the other.” In regards to The Saddest Music in the World, the relationship between Surrealism and melodrama is not one of tension, as Shaviro suggests, but one of cooperation. This paper will analyze two films by filmmakers Maddin was familiar with —Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali on the Surrealist side, and All That Heaven Allows (1955) by Douglas Sirk on the melodrama side—to showcase the important elements of each, concluding with an analysis of The Saddest Music in the World in conjunction with both film styles. Ultimately, it will be shown how Guy Maddin combines French Surrealist cinema and Hollywood melodrama in The Saddest Music in the World, to create his own unique film style.
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...
Artists in the early 1900s commonly utilized techniques of distortion and exaggeration, characteristics of expressionism, to establish the element of emotion. According to Wolf (2017), expressionist artists often incorporate “swirling, swaying, and exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes to convey the turgid emotional state of the artist reacting to the anxieties of the modern world” (p. 1). Amplification of the human figure often evokes strong emotions for audiences of many different cultures. Additionally, the style reflects the consequences of urbanization, such as the alienation of individuals in society (Wolf, 2017).
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.
Specific techniques of German expressionism, such as dark vs. light, religious themes and spirituality, and the use
The link between expressionism and horror quickly became a dominant feature in many films and continues to be prominent in contemporary films mainly due to the German expressionist masterpiece Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari. Wiene’s 1920 Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari utilized a distinctive creepiness and the uncanny throughout the film that became one the most distinctive features of externalising inner mental and emotional states of protagonists through various expressionist methods. Its revolutionary and innovative new art was heavily influenced by the German state and its populace in conjunction with their experience of war; Caligari took a clear cue from what was happening in Germany at the time. It was this film that set cinematic conventions that still apply today, heavily influencing the later Hollywood film noir genre as well as the psychological thrillers that has led several film audiences to engage with a film, its character, its plot and anticipate its outcome, only to question whether the entire movie was a dream, a story of a crazy man, or an elaborate role play. This concept of the familiar and the strange, the reality, the illusion and the dream developed in Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari, is once again present in Scorsese’s 2010 film Shutter Island.
When audiences think of Lang's Metropolis they almost unanimously think of the same image: that of a golden, mechanical being brought to life. It is one of the most recognizable images in German expressionist cinema, on par with the spidery shadow of Max Schrek's Nosferatu creeping up the stairs in Murnau's vampire film, or that of Cesare the somnambulist sleeping upright in Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, yet what separates this i...
Brownlow, Kevin 1994, ‘Preface’, in Paolo, C, Burning Passions: an introduction to the study of silent film, British Film Institute, London: BFI, pp. 1-3.
The neo-expressionist movement in America lasted from the late 70s and came to an end in the early 90s. The movement was a revival of expressionism, a style in which an artist portrays emotional experience into their work (Sandler, 227). It was also a response to the popular art style of the time called minimalism, which involved mostly blank canvases or lines. Neo-expressionism, on the other hand, was raw emotion and chaos. The main figures of the movement were Julian Schnabel, David Salle, and Ada Applebroog. A pioneer of the movement, and also the focus of this essay, is Jean-Michel Basquiat. His art referenced many famous artists and art pieces, from which he found inspiration. This inspiration was one of the features that made the movement
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.
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
We call this is an expression of a. One expresses themselves for many different purposes, expression holds the key to discovering what type of feeling or state that one is experiencing. What do we mean by expressionism in art? Expressionism is one of the many styles of art in which the intention of the artist is not producing a work-of-art that is very accurate. realistic, and basic; but to depict his/her inner emotions. creating an image (or various images) in a powerful way.