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German Expressionism
(Edited from Where the Horror Came From and German Expressionism by David Hudson)
ETA Hoffmann, Das Majorat
‘We crossed long, high-vaulted corridors; the
wavering light borne by Franz threw a
strange brilliance in the thickness of the
gloom. The vague forms of the colored
capitals, pillars and arches seemed
suspended here and there in the air. Our
shadows moved forward at our side like grim
giants and on the walls the fantastic images
over which they slipped trembled and
flickered...’
Illustration - George Crosz
Historical Context – Weimar
Germany
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements in
Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the
1920s. These developments in Germany were part of a larger Expressionist
movement in north and central European art.
The First World War was a devastating and long conflict. At the end of World
War I, Germany was surrounded by a military blockade. The Allies wanted to
ensure that Germany would accept the terms of the peace they had yet to
design. It was a blockade enforced with a vengeance. French hatred for the
people who'd started the war in the first place was made explicit in Prime
Minister Clemenceau's remark that there were still 20 million Germans too
many. So, too, was their fear when Clemenceau added that while other nations
have a taste for life, Germans have a taste for death.
8.5 Million people died and an estimated 21 million were injured.
During the period of recovery following World War I, the German film industry
was booming. However, because of the hard economic times, filmmakers found
it difficult to create movies that could compare with the lush, extravagant
features coming from Hollywood. The filmmakers of the German Universum
Film AG (UFA) studio developed their own style by using symbolism and mise
en scène to add mood and deeper meaning to a movie
Weimar Germany
In the months between Armistice Day and the
signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, an
estimated 700,000 Germans died of hunger. "The
German people," Count Harry Kessler, the eloquent
chronicler of post-WWI Berlin, wrote in his journals,
"starving and dying by the hundred thousand, were
reeling deliriously between blank despair, frenzied
revelry and revolution. Berlin had become a
nightmare, a carnival of jazz bands and machine
guns."
Despite the hardships Germany and particularly
Berlin were the centre of an intense period of
creativity
George Grosz The City 1916,
1917
Expressionism
Whilst across Europe other movements such as Dadaism arose,
in Germany Expressionism in the Arts became a means of
interpreting and reflecting on the chaotic social and political Post
War situation
Expressionism rather than literally depicting events, attempted to
depict the ‘essence’ of them.
Norbert Lynton suggests ‘All human action is expressive; a
gesture is an intentionally expressive action. All art is expressive
- of its author and of the situation in which he works - but some
art is intended to move us through visual gestures that transmit,
and perhaps give release to, emotions and emotionally charged
messages. Such art is expressionist’.
No More Straight Lines
Germany Like Russia in the early years of the 20th century was moving
steadily towards revolution, both political and artistic, this movement
would erupt when WWI made life in Germany dramatically worse.
When Germany was defeated and thrown into economic, political and
social chaos, those artists and writers knew precisely where to lay the
blame. Bourgeois values, cold logic and unattainable beauty were
abandoned; their art would be as raw, violent and dark as the world they
lived in, driven by furious emotion toward a set of aesthetic
characteristics that would later roughly define what we talk about when
we talk about "Expressionism.“
In poetry and the novel, this meant staccato yelps and aborted
utterances.
In painting and sculpture, it meant a straight line was not a straight line if
its perceived "essence" was not straight. Buildings and the human figure
creaked and bent under the strain of the perception of artists who'd
made it back to the chaotic city from the putrid trenches.
On the stage, it meant isolating an object or figure in light and having
everything else fall back into deep darkness.
Max Beckmann, 1919
Theatre & Chiarscuro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrg73BUxJLI
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
…Caligari has a very distinctive look. Pommer and
director Robert Wiene hired Expressionist painters
Walter Röhrig and Walter Reimann and set designer
Hermann Warm to create specific effects.
Caligari was also a great success, creating a new
aesthetic that proved art and cinema could be
profitable.
Many contemporary directors, for example,
Tim Burton are still influence by the film
The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Vincent - Tim Burton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASHP-vgnjAw
Inside Out
In 1924, Paul Leni noted the influence of Caligari on
his own Waxworks wherein he "tried to create sets
so stylized that they evince no idea of reality... It is
not extreme reality that the camera perceives, but
the reality of the inner event."
Leni would be among the first of this batch of
German directors to go to US, developing the horror
genre with films such as The Cat and the Canary,
the original "Old Dark House" movie.
From Caligari to Hitler - 1947
In the article you have been given by Siegfried
Kracauer he states "Caligari is a very specific
premonition in the sense that he uses hypnotic
power to force his will upon his tool -- a technique
foreshadowing, in content and purpose, that
manipulation of the soul which Hitler was the first to
practice on a gigantic scale.“
Do you think its possible to make such a claim?
Do you think its possible for Cinema to reflect or
influence a whole nations mood or mindset?
The Brothers Grimm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGRFT1jx0Aw
Faust - 1926
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyzHR9TtXoU
Fritz Lang & Dr Mabuse the
Gambler
Fritz Lang was also a highly influential Director working in this
period Perhaps his most famous films are Dr. Mabuse
the Gambler (1922), Metropolis and M (1931).
Dr. Mabuse was "a Nietzschean superman, in the bad sense of
the term," Lang said himself. If there were a single film to lend
credence to Kracauer's thesis, this would probably be it. Mabuse
played on German fears and suspicions, on the conspiracy
theories rampant at the time, that someone, somewhere, sight
unseen, was pulling the strings of power, ruining Germany and
the Germans for the sake of their own ends. It was a set-up that
was obviously, dangerously open to interpretation.
Dr Mabuse the Gambler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQqiwIgTUHA
M
Lang's obsessive attention to cinematic language and the techniques to
realize an ever-broader vocabulary for it was most fully realized and
rewarding, according to many, Lang often included, in his first "talkie,"
M. And what talk: "Always... Always, there is this evil force inside me...
It's there all the time, driving me out to wander through the streets... It's
me, pursuing myself, because I want to escape... but it's impossible."
In the case of M, Lang's brilliance lies in what we don't see and don't
hear. When Peter Lorre, as Hans Beckert, the role that made him a star,
approaches a little girl on the street, we watch the scene from inside the
store she's been peering into so eagerly. What he says to win her trust
is left to our imagination. Lang doesn't stage the inevitable moment that
follows at all; he gives the audiences shots and images around it, again,
leaving it to the viewer to do the reconstructing: We hear but don't see
the mother call out the little girl's name. We see the places where the
little girl isn't: On the stairway, at the table. And finally, the balloon
Beckert bought her, abandoned and tangled on telephone wires.
M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VMgLJJKiaA
The end of an era
Lang fled to Hollywood. Murnau and Lubitsch and
countless other German and Austrian filmmakers
were already there; others, like Robert Wiene, would
follow.
Soon, the "war to end all wars" would be followed by
another, which would be even more far-reaching
and disastrous and leave Berlin far more ravished
and ruined than it had been in 1918.
Working in America these directors would go on to
influence and infuse Film Noir and the Horror
genre’s amongst others with their singular aesthetic.
German Expressionism – Stylistic
Elements
Anti-heroic characters at the center of the story.
Plot often involves madness, paranoia, obsession and...
is told in whole or in part from a subjective point of view.
A primarily urban setting (there are exceptions, particularly in the case
of Murnau), providing ample opportunity to explore...
the criminal underworld...
and the complex architectural and compositional possibilities offered, for
example, by stairways and their railings, mirrors and reflecting windows,
structures jutting every bit as vertically as they do horizontally so that...
the director can play with stripes, angles and geometric forms sliced
from the stark contrasts between light and shadow.
Shadows, in fact, can take on an ominous presence of their own; think
of the monster's shadow ascending the stairs in Nosferatu, the shadow
preceding the murderer in M or the pursuit and capture of Maria in
Metropolis
German Expressionism –
Acting
The acting in German Expressionist films
comes close to dance at times.
The acting attempts a direct correlation to the
violent brushstrokes of Expressionist painting
or the staccato utterances of Expressionist
poetry, an outward interpretation of the
extreme inner emotions felt in extreme
situations - fear, anger, and occasionally,
though rarely in the films at hand, joy.
Further Watching & Clicking
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Historians quibble over whether it was truly the first Expressionist
film, but it is without a doubt the first full-length, big-budget, pull-out-all-the-stops international hit
of the genre and probably the most classically Expressionist of the bunch. And, to this day, it's
still a trip.
Fritz Lang: Start with Metropolis and M. If you enjoy the bombast of the first, give Die Nibelungen
a try. If intrigue and suspense are more your cup of schnapps, you'll probably want to go with Dr.
Mabuse the Gambler.
F.W. Murnau: That "icon," Nosferatu, of course. But don't be put off by the heaviocity of the
source for Faust; there's a lot more Murnau here than Goethe. And finally, though it isn't an
Expressionist film, I wouldn't want to pass up an opportunity to plug The Last Laugh.
The Golem. There's a shade of controversy about the depiction of Jews as masters of the black
arts, but Paul Wegener, who plays the monster brought to life himself, approaches the Jewish
legend with clearly visible respect. He approached it more than once, actually, but this is the
classic. Wonderfully angular sets by Hans Poelzig.
Waxworks. German Expressionism meets Orientalism. Like Lang, Paul Leni enjoyed giving his
audiences an eye-full of exotic locales. The result here is episodic and uneven but often
delightfully strange.
Suggestions for further clicking:
Our two previously mentioned articles, "Where the Horror Came From" and "
What is the Perfect Light?"
Anytime you're looking for more info on a filmmaker, the Senses of Cinema "Great Directors"
pages, with their thorough essays, filmographies and links, are a wonderful place to start. SoC
has a page for Fritz Lang, but not one for F.W. Murnau yet. Until then, there's The Web of
Murnau.
The German-Hollywood Connection is a fun browse, exploring just what its title promises, from
Peter Lorre to Franka Potente.
Suggestions for further
reading:
The two classic books on German Expressionist film are Lotte
Eisner's The Haunted Screen and Siegfried Kracauer's From
Caligari to Hitler
Thomas Elsaesser's
Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary is an
important book.
Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast.
Jim Shepard's Nosferatu: A Novel
Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s is simply one
of the most fun books about the city ever written and its author,
Otto Friedrich, is quite a film fan (he also wrote that terrific book
on Hollywood in the 40s, City of Nets). He lingers on good,
gossipy behind-the-scenes stories about the making of some of
the Ufa classics.
Klaus Kreimeier's The Ufa Story is deservedly recognized as the
standard telling.