Alice In New Germany

She discusses how Weimar Cinema came to be and how it did so well financially, moves onto the introduction of Expressionism into film from its origin in theater and painting, and finally describes the characteristics of Expressionism in Cinema as opposed to other artforms. From there, she discusses how the various members of the Prana cinema team came together and how their expertise contributed to the movie, how they prepared the masses for Nosferatu, and how they presented the movie. However, she provides the counterpoint of how Florence Stoker’s lawsuit against the Prana film company damaged the movie’s reputation and popularity. From there she describes how the plot of Nosferatu follows the pattern established by Noel Carroll in Philosophy of Horror of an onset phase, a discovery phase, a confirmation phase, and a confrontation phase. As the chapter progresses, Massaccesi’s description of the plot includes lengthy and in-depth analyses of each character in terms of their interactions with each other and with the setting(s). From there she considers the significance of various aspects of the film in relation to the film’s events and characters, such as camera angles and symbolic imagery, She also discusses the significance of other aspects of the film in relation to the sociopolitical situation in Germany and Europe as a whole, applying themes such as the defeat of a tyrannical villain figure or the supernatural wonder associated with Romantic artwork.

In the film The Bicycle Thief the audience is able to witness all the elements of neorealism. The use of non professional actors, to low class working characters, the flattening of scenes, and the location where it was shot at; are just a few of the essential elements that can be found in this film along with copious neorealist films. It is clear that the director used a variety of shots, angles, and set-ups in order to create certain emotions at very specific scenes in the film. From the start we are able to obtain a feel about the film’s tone as a result of the lack of color. The use of black and white truly helped the audience experience what Italy was like during the post World War 2. As a result of the depressing post war we are able to detect how the act of trying to improve oneself can sometimes lead to desperation.

East Germany, its demise relayed through the mass media of recent history, has in popular consciousness been posited as negative, a corrupt bulwark of the last dying days of Communism in Eastern Europe, barren and silent. The other Germany to its West, it’s citizens free, was striding confidently ahead into the millennium. Recent cinema has sought to examine re-unification, the Wolfgang Becker film «Goodbye Lenin!» (2003), a recent example of such an investigation into the past through cinema. In this essay I will look at the film and the narrative techniques it uses, probing whether it portrays

Just like France, the United States, and Russia, Germany also began to make films, as a way to entertain the working class in an inexpensive way. By 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power, creating very harsh social condition that made several writers, actors, and directors flee Germany because they feared that if they stayed they would have gotten killed. Joseph Goebbels later came to run the UFA, as a government owned production company to make films that were shown to civilians and the military as propaganda on March 13 , 1933, and intended to censor German cinema to make the people believe that they were fascist. Numerous movies in that period of time tried to steer clear of talking about the Holocaust to distract people from what was really happening and to make Hitler seem almost godlike. One film in particular directed by Leni Riefenstahl called The Triumph of the Will became a well known example of propaganda in film history. Throughout the film, you really get to experience a sense of historical context that influenced thousands of people during the time of World War 2. Today, several people view The Triumph of the Will and have a difficult time distinguishing whether or not they can conclude if they view the film as propaganda or an actual piece of art.

Italian Neorealism, a movement that focused on the arts began in 19th century post war Italy and “became the repository of partisan hopes for social justice in the post war italian state.” (Marcus, xiv) Even before the war, Italy had been under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini and his corrupt form of government, Fascism, which caused oppression throughout the country. Neorealistic films allowed filmmakers to use common styles and techniques to finally reveal the world filled with anguish and misery that Mussolini had created. These films allowed the rebirth of Italy with the new ideals of freedom and social order. Some directors choose to add melodramatic elements to their neorealistic film which goes against Neorealism’s goal to project the Italy in its real form. However, although Rome Open City by Roberto Rossellini and Bitter Rice by DeSantis have classic hollywood narrative characteristics, the portrayal of women and children represent neorealist principles that help us further understand the struggles and conflicts of women and children during post-war Italy.

German expressionist theatre began in the late 19th century and continued into the early 20th century. At this time, the expressionist movement as a whole made its way into other countries as well. The general idea of the movement was to take issues and present them in a greatly exaggerated fashion. This created the almost “other-worldly” sense that was very popular amongst expressionist works and dramatists. For example, “In realism, [one] might say, actors sit about on chairs and talk about the weather, but in expressionism, they stand on them and shout about the world” (Styan 1).

Luhrmanns style of adapting and crafting film is knows as “ Red Curtain Cinema.” This style of genre which

Today, in 2014, most people think about Superman when they hear the word Metropolis. This 1927 German film, however, is far from something as bright, colorful and all-American as Superman. America 's greatest hero represents ideals like hope, whereas Metropolis (1927) embodies the opposite and something far more sinister. By looking at the production elements and the cinematic tropes that Metropolis created and inspired, in relation to power dynamics, a scholar can see how the German people felt under the German Reich, that eventually led to the Nazi regime. How are political messages conveyed? What is the relationship between machinery and workers? How do the workers and the rich contrast each other? These questions and many more

Italian neorealism (1945-1953), through directors like Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, made its trademark on cinematic history not only in Italy, but also throughout the world. It was films such as Rome Open City (Roma città aperta, 1945), The Bicycle Thief (Ladri di biciclette, 1948), and Umberto D., (1952) whose style of depicting the harsh economic and social realities of the poor and working class of Italy took off as a new cinematic style after World War II. Neorealism is a response to desperate economic situations and often illustrates suffering, poverty, injustice, and/or discrimination. Many argue that neorealism is a way of seeing reality without prejudice due to the documentary-like technique of the film and its ability

The decline of the Weimar Republic marked a time of great concern over how post-war Germany would shed its authoritarian past and reinvent itself. Feasibly, no other film from this era could so adeptly capture the history of immediate-postwar Germany than Fritz Lang 's Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler. Fritz Lang’s melodramatic tale of an elusive and depraved gambler, or ‘player’ as it’s literally translated, is actually an allegory for a corrupt and economically unstable Germany that would soon give rise to fascism. Though Lang, a fervent anti-fascist, would find great success in cinematically portraying despotism in his cult classic Metropolis (1927), Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler was the film that was the more directly connected to a recovering Germany. Dr. Mabuse is an allegory for the political and economic strife that took hold Weimar Germany.

Fritz Lang's 1931 film M takes a look how one German town comes together to take down a prolific child serial killer. The film is interesting in theme, narrative, and editing and is a standout film in Germany's cinematic history. M can also be considered to be one of the last great German films to come out of the country before Hitler took over the German film industry in 1933 (Mast & Kawin 148). M is also Peter Lorre's first film and his performance helped to catapult him as an actor and allowed him to establish a villainous persona that he would later be known for. M is not only a significant film due to its narrative and editing, but it is also significant because of its style.

Art as a medium has had a cause and effect relationship with history, reflecting the era of which they belonged to through its representation of society, moods, and anxieties. During the 19th century, expressionism as an art movement was prevalent all across Europe, but was truly prominent in Germany. This art movement was seen across all artistic mediums such as painting, theater, and literature as a reaction to realism and impressionism. Towards the end of the arts’ movement, expressionism made its way into film, depicting the tormented psychological realities of post World War Germany. Although, only a few films are considered to be expressionist due to their stylistic and social criticisms adapted from expressionism and applied through the aesthetics of its mis-en-scene. By researching expressionisms characteristics and social representation I will explore the art movements’ historical relevance into film. German expressionist film

German Expressionism is film movement of darkness, madness, and fear and few films personify German Expressionism as the Robert Wiene 1920 silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Considered the quintessential work of the German Expressionist era, Dr. Caligari demonstrates many of the stylistic and thematic elements of the aesthetic movement. In the sequence used for this paper many of these elements such as editing and mise en scene are seen. Mes-en-scene is widely considered the main draw of German Expressionism. Rather than focusing on the realism of the real world, German Expressionism counters the principle of realism and practises extreme distortion as means to communicate inner emotional reality (Johnson, 2010).

The efforts of the Western Allies to eradicate Nazism in the West German film industry in the years following the Second World War largely attributed to the emergence of New German Cinema. By the mid-1950s, the persistent pursuit of their political and economic self-interests left the West German cinema in an economically and artistically detrimental state, thus calling for government intervention. This, in turn, resulted in the inauguration of the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto. Written and signed by twenty-six young German filmmakers who rejected the traditional German cinema, it emphasized their belief in the necessity for films to reflect the state of contemporary Germany rather than to entertain. As a result, they set out to create artistically challenging films that effectively reflected the materialism of postwar Germany, the state of various social classes, as well as the moral disaster that the Nazi legacy left. In prioritising the production and distribution of these films, the group were successful in gaining financial and augural control in

In Gattaca inequality plays a major part in the film; ‘valids’ and ‘invalids’. Gattaca is a world based on inequality not based on tradition, race, gender or religion but on DNA. This is so that everyone can get the “best possible start”. Gattaca is a world that lacks freedom based on the fact that all the children are made through geneticists, who pick the perfect child that have long