The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari Essay

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

This film is a black and white film and the lighting is more towards dim effect which terrified the audience. Music plays the biggest effect in the film. Bernard Hermann’s theme is used for this film because it uses mostly high-pitched string instrument notes so the suspense and horror mood can be formed to the audience.

Expressionism can be described as a movement in the fine arts that emphasized the expression of inner experience rather than realistic portrayal, looking to obtain not objective reality, but the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in the artist. Several characteristics of expressionism are distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy. “The Green Table,” a ballet by Kurt Jooss, 1932, is an ideal example of expressionism because it depicts the choreographer’s personal interpretation of war through the use of movement, music by Fritz Cohen and lighting by Hermann Mankard.

Director Tim Burton is brashly thought of as having a dark, macabre, and humorous style in his films. This being true, there is a multitude of ways that the style is created for the audience. Furthermore, Burton’s cinematic technique usage is a direct mark of creative exposure of this dark style throughout the duration of a film’s story. Director Tim Burton uses diverse cinematic techniques to create a variety of effects that represent his style of grim childlike misfortune, tampered by opulent optimism.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a German Expressionist film that was released in 1920. The film was directed by Robert Wiene. Expressionism is defined as a visible world that is reshaped and even, distorted by internal forces such as soul, spirit, subjectivity, and emotion. A major component of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is it contains various examples of mise-en-scène, which is associated with visual aspects such as props in the background or clothing and the makeup the actor is wearing. Moreover, “boxes within boxes” is seen numerous times throughout The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. One example where “boxes within boxes” is seen in the film is in Dr. Caligari’s tiny shack, where he has Cesare

In Bowen’s article, he discusses the different gothic motifs that make up gothic literature such as power and restraint, clashing time periods, strange places, terror versus horror, and a world of doubt. “Edward Scissorhands” has always been considered a strange film while We Have Always Lived in a Castle has always been considered a gothic novel. According to Bowen’s list of gothic motifs, “Edward Scissorhands” would be considered more gothic than the novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle because it fits more of the gothic conventions.

The cinematography of the film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was very effective to the audience at the time. During the 1920’s, it wasn’t common to have a horror movie like this with a dark and twisted visual style. Because of the cinematography of this German film, it actually had a major influence on the American films in horror and film noir genres. To get the cinematography right, they had to exaggerate the lighting to give off the feel of it being a horror film.

In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene cleverly uses mise-en-scene and cinematography to add to the eeriness and originality in the scene of Cesare’s awakening. The scene is important to the overall film because it instills the viewer to believe that there will be a connoting between Cesare and Alan. The purpose can be seen in the reverse shot sequence at the end of the scene in the dialogue “How long do I have to live?” – “Till dawn tomorrow.” The scene is based highly on use of expressionistic credit design and stylization of acting through exaggerations. Through the theatrical design set, Robert Wiene builds tension and drama to the scene and draws the views attention to the constructed nature of the film.

According to “The Art of Tim Burton: The Artist Before The Filmmaker” website, the gothic art can be seen by “the use of black, the darkness of some of his drawings, the heavy make up, the paleness of the skins, the macabre, and monsters and other ghostly creatures” (“The Art of Tim Burton: The Artist Before The Filmmaker”). According to the “World of Light and Shadow - German Expressionism and its Influence on Modern Cinema” website, “German Expressionist films have two separate elements from all of the films deal with a heavy contrast between black and white, good and evil, light and shadow, and deal with brokenness and insanity of a shattered psyche” (Tim Martin). The movie “Edward Scissorhands” involves Gothic art because the house that Edward lives in at the beginning of the movie includes Gothic design, such as the color black and the way that the house looks like a form of a small mansion and a form of a cathedral due to the amount of space the building seems to have. The image above this paragraph features Edward Scissorhands and Cesare from “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” beside each other because the resemblance of the facial expression and the body posture suggests that Cesare, from “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, influenced Tim Burton with the use of German Expressionism. German Expressionism would be included with the facial expression of Edward Scissorhands from Cesare because “German Expressionists emphasize the horror of life because the people were living within the aftermath or the war and for some of the other citizens the people were still living the war itself.”

The director also used many elements of design but the ones that I thought were very obvious were color, shape, and texture. One of the very influential design elements in the film was color. The main factor for this was the color of their houses and cars. Each one of the townspeople's homes were all colors with pinks, yellows and blues. The homes were also very nice and had the prettiest lawns and very clean houses inside and outside.

By distorting the outside world and the characters in it, the audience is thrilled and taken to another world full of horror and distress in a subjective manner. In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the set design is wildly distorted, with construction that had never been seen before. Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell write, “The cutting and camerawork are fairly conservative, but the setting and acting seek to convey a madman’s vision of the world” (Bordwell and Thompson 1). The setting itself, a carnival, was very popular at the time the film was made. The makeup of Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss), and his somnambulist Cesare (Conrad Veidt) is also included in this bizarre new style of expression.

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

His cinematography “creates an exceptionally inviting, varied look for this nocturnal story, and special visual effects are smoothly integrated into the action. The makeup that adds pale eyes, ghostly pallor and tiny blue veins to the principals' faces manages to create a frisson of danger without marring the actors' attractiveness” (Maslin). Rousselot used dark-lensing, a way to attain low key shots and thus created a huge contrast to the sets and costumes (Maslin). This made the characters seem as though they were the only important things in the otherwise dark and gloomy shots.

The art world has a limitless array of mediums and different artistic periods, challenging the opinion of what should be accepted by the masses. "Expressionism is the art of the emotive, the art of tension provoked by consciousness of the forces which surround modern humankind." Challenging the academic traditions of the previous centuries, Edvard Munch impacted the art world as an instrumental leader in the development of modern German expressionism. His painting The Scream has made its mark in questioning the ideals of what is acceptable concerning the history of art. The paper will discuss Munch’s life history, uncovering the influences which led him to expressionism, as well as a detailed description and analysis of The Scream,

Luhrmann is eccentric and unconventional in his filming as he illustrates ideas and themes to modern audiences while still working with older texts. He uses Red Curtain Cinema in all his movies. Red Curtain Cinema breaks classic Hollywood traditions and the purpose of it is to entertain,