expressionist film
TRANSCRIPT
LECTURE TWO: The early ExpressionistCinema: fairy tales, magic
and the mysterious shadow world of early Weimar
First aim of module is to explore Weimar cinema as a national cinema
Later we will look at the transnational connections
What does Weimar refer to?
The German cinema (in its broadest sense) from 1919 to 1933 (corresponds to the ‘Weimar Republic’, which was the first democratically elected national government that Germany had encountered)
WEIMAR CINEMA
Stresses political and ideological aspects of the period and acknowledges aspects of the film’s reception.
Term which embraces all forms of filmmaking during the period. ‘Expressionism’ just one of these.
‘Golden age’
Key era for development of film as artistic and avant-garde medium
Strong influence on subsequent film production
Important and exciting era for all the arts, including those closely related to cinema, such as visual arts, architecture, photography, dance
MODERNISM
Kurt Schwitters
Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari )
Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M, Destiny, Dr Mabuse)
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (The Last Laugh, Nosferatu, Faust)
Georg Wilhelm Pabst (Pandora’s Box, Diary of a Lost Girl, The Joyless Street)
Paul Wegener (The Golem)
EXPRESSIONIST FILM
Specific type of film which came to the fore in the early Weimar period
Modernist Art movement (early 20th century)
Term stresses the formal or aesthetic aspects of film production with emphasis on the author or director
Strongly evident in the first few years of the Republic, 1918 – 1923)
Film as an art form
Art movement
Abstraction, fragmentation, distortion
Focus is on the expression of psychological rather than physical realism
Impressionism (late 1800s)
Claude Monet
Expressionism (early 1900s)
Wassily Kandinsky
Closer connection to ExpressionismCaspar David Friedrich 1818
Prestige art films aimed at raising profile and reputation of the German film at home and abroad
Artistically ambitious
Pushing the boundaries of what film could achieve aesthetically and thematically
Prefigured avant-garde film as well as Hollywood genre films (horror, film noir, family melodrama for example)
The outsider/insider
Doppelgänger (doubles)
Narrative structure:
Oedipal scenarios (rebellion followed by submission to the law of the father)
lack of continuity of narrative (interiority)
Sources from other media (literature; theatre: Max Reinhardt)
Intertexuality
Scratching beneath the surface of reality and fantasy, appearances and disguise
Anxiety; Insanity; Uncanny; Ghostly
Set designs:
Artificiality
Painterly
Angular Shapes
Fragmentary
Distorted perspectives
Action:
Emotional
Unnatural
Jerky movement
Exaggerated gestures
Fragmentary
Lighting:
Soft light
Hard keylight
Chiaroscuro (single key light from the side)
Extract from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari:
What aspects of Expressionism can you recognise?