unit 3 german expressionism

8/4/2019 Unit 3 German Expressionism

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Unit 3: Research project

German Expressionism(Edited from Where the Horror Came Fromand German Expressionismby David Hudson)
http://www.greencine.com/viewProfile?a=dwhudsonhttp://www.greencine.com/viewProfile?a=dwhudson


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ETA Hoffmann, Das Majorat

We crossed long, high-vaulted corridors; thewavering light borne by Franz threw astrange brilliance in the thickness of the

gloom. The vague forms of the coloredcapitals, pillars and arches seemedsuspended here and there in the air. Ourshadows moved forward at our side like grim

giants and on the walls the fantastic imagesover which they slipped trembled andflickered...
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/etahoff/major/major001.htmhttp://gutenberg.spiegel.de/etahoff/major/major001.htm


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Illustration - George Crosz


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Historical ContextWeimar Germany

German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements inGermany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the1920s. These developments in Germany were part of a larger Expressionistmovement in north and central European art.

As in Russia The First World War was a devastating and long conflict. 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 millionGermans too many. So, too, was their fear when Clemenceau added that whileother 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 foundit difficult to create movies that could compare with the lush, extravagantfeatures coming from Hollywood. The filmmakers of the German Universum Film

AG (UFA) studio developed their own style by using symbolism and mise enscne to add mood and deeper meaning to a movie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_Warhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s_Berlinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Ihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood,_Los_Angeles,_Californiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universum_Film_AGhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood,_Los_Angeles,_Californiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universum_Film_AGhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universum_Film_AGhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_sc%C3%A8nehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_sc%C3%A8nehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setting_tonehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setting_tonehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_sc%C3%A8nehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_sc%C3%A8nehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universum_Film_AGhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universum_Film_AGhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood,_Los_Angeles,_Californiahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Ihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s_Berlinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_Warhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany


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Weimar Germany

In the months between Armistice Day and thesigning of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, anestimated 700,000 Germans died of hunger. "TheGerman people," Count Harry Kessler, the eloquent

chronicler of post-WWI Berlin, wrote in his journals,"starving and dying by the hundred thousand, werereeling deliriously between blank despair, frenziedrevelry and revolution. Berlin had become anightmare, a carnival of jazz bands and machineguns."

Despite the hardships Germany and particularlyBerlin were the centre of an intense period ofcreativity


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George Grosz The City 1916, 1917


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Expressionism

Whilst across Europe other movements such as Dadaism arose,in Germany Expressionism in the Arts became a means ofinterpreting and reflecting on the chaotic social and political PostWar 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 someart is intended to move us through visual gestures that transmit,

and perhaps give release to, emotions and emotionally chargedmessages. Such art is expressionist.


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No More Straight Lines

When Germany was defeated and thrown into economic, political andsocial chaos, those artists and writers knew precisely where to lay theblame. Bourgeois values, cold logic and unattainable beauty wereabandoned; their art would be as raw, violent and dark as the worldthey lived in, driven by furious emotion toward a set of aesthetic

characteristics that would later roughly define what we talk about whenwe talk about "Expressionism.

In poetry and the novel, this meant staccato yelps and abortedutterances.

In painting and sculpture, it meant a straight line was not a straight lineif its perceived "essence" was not straight. Buildings and the human

figure creaked and bent under the strain of the perception of artistswho'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 havingeverything else fall back into deep darkness.


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Max Beckmann, 1919


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Theatre & Chiarscuro

Film took on some of these artistic aesthetics.

Much of German expressionistic filmdeveloped out of Theatre, Particularly the

work of Max Reindhart.

Directors such as Emil Jannings, ErnstLubitsch and F. W. Murnau acted under

Reindhart From Reinhardt, they learned, above all, they

learned how to light. "Chiaroscuro,"
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Essence of Expressionism

Expressionisms dark and morbid themes clearly emerge fromthe atmosphere of the time and the experiences of WWI. Theyalso reflect influences from Romaticism.

"I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing

at the moon," wrote the artist George Grosz in his memoirs.Grosz had enthusiastically enlisted to fight in 1914; by 1917, hewas in a mental institution. When released, he wandered "dark,gloomy" Berlin, drawing: "I drew a man, face filled with fright,washing blood from his hands... I drew a cross-section of atenement house: through one window could be seen a man

attacking his wife; through another, two people making love; froma third hung a suicide with body covered by swarming flies. Idrew soldiers without noses; war cripples with crustacean-likesteel arms... I also wrote poetry..."


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George Grosz The Big Push


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Carl Meyer & Hans Janowitz

Meyer & Janowitz both were fascinated in the macabre. Meyerhad fought in the war and Janowitz had witnessed his fatherssuicide and had been commited at 16.

Janowitz later described an experience that stayed with him andwent on to influence the film he would make The Cabinet of Dr

Caligari. He'd met a girl at a fair in Hamburg. They were getting along

nicely until they lost each other. Tracking her down, Janowitzrecognized her laugh in the darkness of a park. He then saw abusinessman follow that laugh before he could. The next day, he

read about the murder of a girl in that same park. Suspecting shewas the one, he attended the funeral -- where he saw thebusinessman again. He had no evidence. And said nothing.


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The Cabinet of Dr Caligari


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The story tells the tale of a Dr. Caligari who travels the carniecircuit with a young man called Cesare, who sleeps in a coffin.Caligaris act is to awaken Cesare him on stage, hypnotized,and predict the future. Cesare later wanders the streets, killingCaligari's enemies.

Two students have their suspicions regarding Caligari and, aftera series of events in which one of them is killed, Caligari ischased to to an insane asylum. Caligari, it turns out, is not just apatient, but the director of the Institute.

The student exposes the truth about Caligari and the film ends

with the mad doctor bound in a strait-jacket.


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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrg73BUxJLI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrg73BUxJLIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrg73BUxJLIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrg73BUxJLI


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Caligari has a very distinctive look. Pommer and

director Robert Wiene hired Expressionist paintersWalter Rhrig and Walter Reimann and set designerHermann Warm to create specific effects.

Caligari was also a great success, creating a newaesthetic that proved art and cinema could be

profitable.

Many contemporary directors, for example, TimBurton are still influence by the film The NightmareBefore Christmas.
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Vincent - Tim Burton

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASHP-vgnjAw


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Inside Out

In 1924, Paul Leni noted the influence of Caligarionhis own Waxworkswherein he "tried to create setsso stylized that they evince no idea of reality... It isnot extreme reality that the camera perceives, butthe 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.
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From Caligari to Hitler - 1947

In the article by Siegfried Kracauer he states"Caligariis a very specific premonition in the sensethat he uses hypnotic power to force his will uponhis tool -- a technique foreshadowing, in content andpurpose, that manipulation of the soul which Hitlerwas 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 orinfluence a whole nations mood or mindset?


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The Brothers Grimm

Germany has a tradition of dark stories andfairytales about ghouls, witches and dwarves."Most German children delight in tales of

horror."


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F. W. Murnau

F. W. Murnau was an art historian from Westphaliawho, as noted, wound up in Max Reinhardt's circlein Berlin.

His early features sprang from the heart of the

horror genre. The Haunted Castlein 1921, and thefollowing year, Nosferatu.

It was the first feature-length film loosely based onBram Stoker's Dracula,

Throughout his film work from the The Last Laugh to

Faust, Murnau (working with the greatcinematographer Karl Freund ) created unique andstylised works that played dramatically with light,shadow and reflection.
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Nosferatu - 1922

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGRFT1jx0Aw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGRFT1jx0Awhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGRFT1jx0Awhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGRFT1jx0Aw


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Faust - 1926

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyzHR9TtXoU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyzHR9TtXoUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyzHR9TtXoUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyzHR9TtXoU


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Fritz Lang & Dr Mabuse the Gambler

Fritz Lang was also a highly influential Director working in thisperiod Perhaps his most famous films areDr. Mabuse theGambler(1922), Metropolisand M(1931).

Dr. Mabuse was "a Nietzschean superman, in the bad sense ofthe term," Lang said himself. If there were a single film to lend

credence to Kracauer's thesis, this would probably be it. Mabuseplayed on German fears and suspicions, on the conspiracytheories rampant at the time, that someone, somewhere, sightunseen, was pulling the strings of power, ruining Germany andthe Germans for the sake of their own ends. It was a set-up that

was obviously, dangerously open to interpretation.
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Dr Mabuse the Gambler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQqiwIgTUHA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQqiwIgTUHAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQqiwIgTUHAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQqiwIgTUHA


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M

Lang's obsessive attention to cinematic language and the techniques torealize an ever-broader vocabulary for it was most fully realized andrewarding, 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'sme, pursuing myself, because I want to escape... but it's impossible."

In the case of M, Lang's brilliance lies in what we don'tsee and don'thear. When Peter Lorre, as Hans Beckert, the role that made him astar, approaches a little girl on the street, we watch the scene frominside the store she's been peering into so eagerly. What he says to winher trust is left to our imagination. Lang doesn't stage the inevitablemoment that follows at all; he gives the audiences shots and imagesaround 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 theplaces where the little girl isn't: On the stairway, at the table. And finally,the balloon Beckert bought her, abandoned and tangled on telephonewires.


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M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VMgLJJKiaA
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The end of an era

Lang fled to Hollywood. Murnau and Lubitsch andcountless other German and Austrian filmmakerswere already there; others, like Robert Wiene, wouldfollow.

Soon, the "war to end all wars" would be followed byanother, which would be even more far-reachingand disastrous and leave Berlin far more ravishedand ruined than it had been in 1918.

Working in America these directors would go on toinfluence and infuse Film Noir and the Horrorgenres amongst others with their singular aesthetic.


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German ExpressionismStylistic

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 caseof 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 reflectingwindows, structures jutting every bit as vertically as they do horizontallyso that...

the director can play with stripes, angles and geometric forms slicedfrom the stark contrasts between light and shadow.

Shadows, in fact, can take on an ominous presence of their own; thinkof the monster's shadow ascending the stairs in Nosferatu, the shadowpreceding the murderer in Mor the pursuit and capture of Maria inMetropolis
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German ExpressionismActing

The acting in German Expressionist filmscomes close to dance at times.

The acting attempts a direct correlation to the

violent brushstrokes of Expressionist paintingor the staccato utterances of Expressionistpoetry, an outward interpretation of the

extreme inner emotions felt in extremesituations - fear, anger, and occasionally,though rarely in the films at hand, joy.


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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 thegenre and probably the most classically Expressionist of the bunch. And, to this day, it's still a trip.

Fritz Lang: Start with Metropolisand M. If you enjoy the bombast of the first, give Die Nibelungena 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 sourcefor 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 Jewishlegend with clearly visible respect. He approached it more than once, actually, but this is theclassic. Wonderfully angular sets by Hans Poelzig.

Waxworks. German Expressionism meets Orientalism. Like Lang, Paul Leni enjoyed giving hisaudiences an eye-full of exotic locales. The result here is episodic and uneven but oftendelightfully strange.

Suggestions for further clicking:

Our two previously mentioned articles, "Where the Horror Came From" and "What is the PerfectLight?"

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. SoChasa 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, fromPeter Lorre to Franka Potente.
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Suggestions for further reading:

The two classic books on German Expressionist film are LotteEisner's The Haunted Screenand Siegfried Kracauer's FromCaligari to Hitler

Thomas Elsaesser's Weimar Cinema and After: Germany'sHistorical Imaginaryis 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 1920sis 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 bookon Hollywood in the 40s, City of Nets). He lingers on good,

gossipy behind-the-scenes stories about the making of some ofthe Ufa classics. Klaus Kreimeier's The Ufa Storyis deservedly recognized as the

standard telling.
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unit 3 german expressionism

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