Bob Fosse's 1972 Cabaret

The expressionist movement emerged in two separate cultural hearths in Germany. Centered in Dresden, a group of artists known as Die Brücke (The Bridge), “wanted to create a radical art that could speak to modern audiences, which they characterized as young, vital, and

Though this Pop Art movement happened in a few other countries other than the United States and Britain; the movement was also reflected in the country, France. Though in France their movement was known as “Nouveau Réalisme, which is the equivalent to the Pop art movement” (The Art Story Foundation ). This movement reflected the Pop art movement both focused on commercial culture, the Nouveau Réalisme and its artists focused more on their “concerned with objects than with painting” (The Art Story Foundation ).Another movement that the pop art movement was link to in a way was its counterpart in Germany known as Capitalist Realism. Though this movement was a “movement that focused on subjects taken from commodity culture and utilized an aesthetic based in the mass media” (The Art Story Foundation ).The artist within this movement wanted to “expose consumerism and superficiality of contemporary capitalist society by using the imagery and aesthetic of popular art and advertising within their work” (The Art Story Foundation ). These two movements were two movement that were linked to the Pop Art movement.

Expressionism appeared in poetry and drama in Germany and Austria just before World War I, and was influenced by Freudian Theories of the subconscious and Nietzsche’s anti-rationalism ideas. Expressionism was mostly popular during times of social change or spiritual crisis. This kind of art was a way for people to express their emotions and feelings during a time in the world when they didn’t know any other way to express themselves.

The star-studded romantic comedy Midnight in Paris is one of Woody Allen’s most recent films which he did both, wrote and directed. It is a film about a man named Gil (Owen Wilson) who travels to Paris with his fiancée’s parents in order to expand his imagination and he ends up embarking on a journey to the 1920s while walking the streets of Paris at night. Not only is this film engaging and witty, but it also manages to provide both, overt and covert examples of postmodernism in film. By analyzing Woody Allen’s 2011film Midnight in Paris, we can identify the presence of many underlying motifs in both the narrative and the characterization of the film when using some of Frederic Jameson and Jean Baudrillard’s concepts on postmodernism.

Surrealism is a movement that built off of the burgeoning look into art, psychology, and the workings of the mind. Popularly associated with the works of Salvador Dali, Surrealist art takes imagery and ideology and creates correlation where there is none, creating new forms of art. In this essay I will look to explore the inception of the surrealist movement, including the Surrealist Manifesto, to stress the importance of these artists and their work in the 20th century and beyond. I also will look to films from our European Cinema course to express how films incorporate the influence of surrealism both intentionally and unintentionally.

Defined by www.news.artnet.com/, German Expressionism is defined as “an artistic genre that originated in Europe in the 1920s, and is broadly defined as the rejection of Western conventions, and the depiction of reality that is widely distorted for emotional effect.” In Nosferatu, the film contains a plethora of distorted realities in an attempt to evoke the “emotional effect” from the audience. This is shown by the director of the film, F.W. Murnau’s usage of lighting and makeup & costume design.

Satirical on every level, Bob Fosse's 1972 film Cabaret redefines the previously accepted genre of the musical. Using the songs and routines as cunning tools of social commentary the musical numbers both predict and interpret the world of Berlin in 1931.

So I saw Cabaret last night and I have to say it was truly a great performance. The cast did an amazing job within roles that defy 'conventional' standards. If you've never seen or heard of Cabaret (like I hadn't until last night, except for like one song from it) let me tell you it is humorous, raunchy, and horribly tragic all at once...and the truly scary thing about this play is you don't see the horror that has been unfolding until it's far to late...

Cabaret is a musical that takes place in Berlin, Germany 1929. Berlin was a place where artists, musicians and other fine arts activities were enjoyable. This story is about a group of individuals from diverse backgrounds and countries that their lives cross paths. It all starts with an American writer named Cliff who goes to visit the city of Berlin to write a book. While on the way to Berlin he meets a man by the name Fraulein who is a salesperson. He talks to Cliff about how beautiful Berlin is and the places to go and see. Once there they meet several people such as Sally, Herr, Ernst, Rosie, Texas and many other members of the Kit Kat Klub Cabaret. Living at Berlin he begins to fall in love with Sally who is from England that came to Berlin

After World War II, the American motion picture studios began releasing films shot in black and white, with a high contrast style known as Film Noir. Though the roots of this style of film was greatly influenced by the German Expressionist movement in film during the late 1910-early 1920’s, and films that resembled this style were made prior to the war, including the early films by Fritz Lang, a German director who fled Germany prior to the war to work in America, this film style would become prevalent during the post WWII era. Besides the shadowed lighting style and the psychologically expressive mise-en-scène, the film noir plot-lines often surrounded crime dramas and were greatly influenced by the pulp fiction novels of the period by authors like Dashiell Hammett and

Like German Expressionist cinema, Lang is able to create something that may appear to be innocent at the surface and

To fully comprehend why and how this cinematic motion took place, it is valuable here to establish the wider social climate of France at the time, and the active forces which heavily shaped New Wave cinema. Between the years of 1945 and 1975, France would undergo “thirty glorious years” of economic growth, urbanization, and a considerable baby boom, all of which came to expand and radically alter the parameters of French culture (Haine 33). Beneath the surface affluence however, France was in a state of deep self-evaluation and consciousness. Following WW11, the

The literal dislocation between East and West Germany was a major factor in the suffering of German cinema

As we look deeper into the historical contexts that came about in Germany during the 1920’s, Germany was confined due to the isolation the country was experiencing during World War I. During this solitude, the German government banned foreign films. German Expressionism was formed in result of the conclusion of World War I which compelled Germany to establish its own style of cinema. German Expressionist films produced in the Weimar Republic

At the turn of the century Paris was one of the capitals of culture and art to the outside world. However, the truth of the matter was that this taboo-ridden society was being run by an aristocracy that was repressing the arts. Naturally, when World War 1 broke out, the suppressed French society finally had a release and a rebellion against order arose. WWI specifically affected the theatre of French and it’s aftermath. From the ashes of war the avant-garde theatre grew and styles such as Dadaism and Surrealism were born. It was both the climate of culture before the war and the devastation of the war that lead to the outbreak of avant-garde theatre in France.