Dr Caligari Essay

Originated in the 1920’s, German Expressionism was an art form known for its powerful way of expressing emotion in Europe after World War I. Its use of dim lights and extraordinary shadows allow for a mysterious feel to be incorporated in the film. Famous and well-known motion pictures including Nosferatu and a bit of Citizen Kane adhere to German Expressionism and serve as a noteworthy influence on Burton’s art style. Corpse Bride, much like Nosferatu, also relies on the use of distorted angles and shadows to enhance the story’s visuals.

Expressionism emerged in Germany as a response to the growing anxiety about humanity's place in the world and its spiritual detachment. The term is occasionally suggestive of angst, a mixed feeling of fear and anxiety. What happened during the early 20th century that caused people to become so distressed? Expressionism shifted the artist's focus from the natural, external world, to the world inside the artist, concerned more with feelings and emotional state. Through this medium, artists expressed social realities, a prominent example of this is the 20th Century German Expressionism and its opposition to Nazi political ideology. As a result, a Degenerate Art show emerged, which was a Nazi-sponsored Degenerate Art Exhibit. This display of art

It has been argued that the German expressionist movement has had an influence on many later filmmakers and genres. I agree with this argument and in this essay I will be explaining why I believe this to be the case by discussing the common traits of expressionism and applying them to later films and genres.

German Expressionism is a kind of art that is supposed to make you feel something. When you look at a painting such as “The Scream” by Edvard Munch (1863-1944), you ask yourself what kind of emotions does this painting give you. A group of early 20th century German artists used the term “expressionism” to desribe the way they produced art. The title later turned into “German Expressionism”. This art movement was prominent during 1905-1925. In German it is known as “Die Brucke” and “Der Blaue Reiter”. Unlike Impressionism, its goals were not to reproduce the impression by the surrounding world, but to express the artists feelings on the surrounding world. Expressionism comes from the route word “expression” which

Like many of Dix’s generation in Germany during the 1920s, he drew from the German expressionist movement in his use of distortion, directness, media and subject matter in plate 1. German expressionism involved directness, frankness and a desire to startle the viewer. Their works embraced printmaking and focused on the emotions expressed rather than reality. Dix heightens the emotions effects through his meticulous rendered, horrific images. The brilliant white bones stand out against the darker background. He experimentation with printmaking and used multiple acid baths to eat away at the image, to mimic decaying flesh. This horrifying focal point does startle the viewer through its direct disposition. Expressionists often felt the need to confront the devastating experiences of WWI, as plate 1 documents through it’s shocking yet realistic representation of the war and its effect. The common expressionist technique of distortion is utilised to exaggerate the skull and expose it as disgusting and confronting. Otto Dix’s attempt to confront the viewer through the depiction of emotions rather than reality. Dix’s incorporation of German Expressionist characteristics and techniques, the art movement of the time, in Plate 1, is a documentation of cultural art practises in the

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.

Annotated Bibliography Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler, A Psychological History of German Film. Princeton University Press, 1947. Retrieved from https://monoskop.org/images/1/12/Kracauer_Siegfried_From_Caligari_to_Hitler_A_Psychological_History_of_the_German_Film.pdf Siegfried Kracauer, a 1940s film analyst, was the first to make the argument that German expressionist films like Metropolis shaped Adolf Hitler's totalitarian propaganda. German expressionism was a cultural movement in protest to the bourgeois culture in Germany prior to World War II.

German expressionism was born around the first decades of the twentieth century. Following the World War I, it focused on giving “objective expression to subjective human feelings and emotions” (Barsam & Monahan 194). To do so they manipulated design elements. Their aim was to immerse the audience in the story by creating a mise-en-scène that would intensify it.

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

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is praised worldwide for its anti-authoritarian message and expressionistic style with its framed narrative. The film is cited as one of the first horror films and influenced the development of film noir. Caligari remains to this day an important part of the history of German

Expressionist art was also gaining popularity in Germany, which is where it initially developed as a movement against the social conventions and perceptions of the state and traditional Western values (Long 1-3). The dynamic expression of emotion indicative of the artistic movement was a fitting medium for manifesting Janowitz and Mayer’s anxieties about the discordance in German society, especially since the nationalists that they held so much distaste for denounced the genre, seeing it as “un-German” (Long 3). Alfred Kubin, a noted Austrian surrealist artist, designed the set for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and it was influenced by a litany of other artists (Kracauer 67-68). Expressionism uses striking, and often unnerving, visuals to transform the mundane world into a supernatural reality, which can more accurately depict the distorted expression of emotions that the entire movement is based around. In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, common things, such as houses and trees,

German Expressionism was a movement that started in the 1920’s soon before as well as after World War I occurred. The country was overwhelmed with major economic, social and political problems that the amount of reparation for the costs of war was over the roof. “In 1916, Germany’s government had banned foreign films but the demand from theaters to generate films led to an increase in domestic film production from 24 films in 1914 to 130 films in 1918” (INSERT) With inflation on the rise, Germans were attending films more freely because they knew that their money’s value was constantly decreasing. The movement was meant to stray away from realism, with set designs that were often unrealistic featuring hard and dark shadows, jagged lines and

The 1927 German expressionism film Metropolis was a landmark German film. The definition of German Expressionism is a cultural movement that is challenging to define as it is not distinguished by a singular style or method of creation. German Expressionism is used through movies for which often contain themes that are dark, bland and robotic. These movies also contain poor acting, excessive makeup, strange costumes and storylines with poor lighting and extreme stylization.

The movements of German Expressionism and Japanese pre-war cinema produced trends greatly influenced by its historical context. These contexts contributed to shaping their own stylistic styles captured throughout the theme, mise-en-scene, and cultural ideologies. Although these two movements occurred in fairly similar time periods, they both occurred in different parts of the world which had a fundamental role in generating key contrasts between these movements. Both occurring in pre-war periods, a striking similarity existed between the two; they both displayed the economic instabilities. Both subtly exhibited the internal anxieties that the individuals faced in the differing societies. German Expressionism had the stylistic forms that in turn captured distorted images or grotesque style to convey an abstract sense of reality throughout 1920’s. On the other hand, the Japanese pre-war cinema expressed the humanistic family by displaying their everyday struggles of the lower middle class known as the “common people” during the 1930’s. Although these movements were individually unique throughout their distinct stylistic devices and ideologies, they essentially came together during this time period to help transform the art of national cinema.