Expressionism in Cinema
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Introduction
Cinema,
a new form of communication at the beginning of the 20th century
attracted the attention of many different people. Cinema attempted to either
show the real world, or tell stories of the imagination. The contrasting options
for film, representation or imagination/illusion, were not simply a choice
they were a dilemma. This was a dilemma not easily solved, for a very simple
reason; no film is completely true as life and not cinema is completely imaginary,
completely free of everyday life. The classic narrative implies a completeness,
there is a beginning a middle and a conclusion, there is a enigma, a series
of events, and in the conclusion all questions are answered. But, one very
interesting point about Rear Window, is that we never see the murder
which is the centre of the movie. We do not see very much of the murderer
either. Our imagination is asked to fill in many spaces and complete
the story.
Photographs give the impression of reality,
they are pictures of people and objects in the world, but these are not always
real, Rear Window was not filmed in New York, it was filmed in a studio in
California. However, the set was a detailed copy of a real place in New York,
but a detailed copy is not an exact copy, let alone is it the place it is
supposed to be; a copy is not the real thing.
Created at the end of the 19th
century, cinema was quickly influenced by 20th century modern art
movements. At the beginning of the 20th century there was an explosion
of creativity in the arts. In painting and literature many modern art movements
appeared. Two modern art movements that emerged in the early 20th
century that had significant influence on cinema were Expressionism and Surrealism.
In cinema Expressionism was very important
for the introduction of new techniques of camerawork and of story telling.
Surrealism stressed more the unconscious and dream world, imagination in making
movies, for them this was greater reality. Both, Expressionism and Surrealism
questioned the honesty of classic narrative cinema. That like every good liar,
the liar always promise the truth, but really they are not telling the truth.
Expressionist and Surrealist cinema criticise classic narrative as false;
their films suggest:
That the audience is not told everything
by the film. The viewer needs to add information to complete the story, from
what the see or hear.
That interpretations of events in the film vary,
that the meaning of the film’s events are not the same for everyone.
That the set and the characters are not
truly realistic, they only look realistic.
That the film does not portray real time
but a manipulated cinema time.
That the hero cannot and does know and
control all the important events in the film.
That film can not have a completely logical
structure.
That no film has a conclusion that answers
all of the questions found in it.
However, they also argued that real life was
not clearly ordered and logical either. That the picture presented in classic
narrative is not true of real life either. These modernists argued that as
real modern life was alienating and contradictory, then the arts need to be
contradictory to reveal that too. These sorts of arguments were presented
as heated discussion about modernism. The arguments raged over whether modern
arts should be representational and have a logical structure (as classic narrative
tries to have) or should it be imaginative, expressive and not necessarily
logical. These arguments are similar to current arguments between modernism
and postmodernism. One difference is that the modernists sought to remove
the contradiction and alienation they thought they saw in modern life, today’s
postmodernists do not seek to remove the fragmentation and contradiction that
they think they see in contemporary life. Instead, postmodernists want to
make an ironic game of life.
To consider how Expressionists and Surrealist
tackled these question, we will look at the Expressionist film The Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari (1919), and the Surrealist film Un Chien Andalou
(1928). Both are black and white silent films. While there is almost ten years
between these two films, these two art movements were both part of the same
modernist movement and both situated in the events of post-WWI Europe. Both
were influenced by early 20th century social and economic modernism.
Expressionism
At the beginning of the 20th century
there began an explosion of creativity in the arts. In painting and literature,
for example, many modern art movements appeared. In Europe, before the 15th
century painting was used to show stories from the bible. After the Italian
Renaissance, in the 15th century, painting began to portray images
of real people and place. This continued until the end of the 19th
century, when photography was created. Photography was able to show people
and objects accurately. Photographs could be produced much more quickly than
paintings. Because of photography, painting became free from the need to represent.
Painting moved to expression, abstraction and pure painting, pictures (see
Gombrich for example). Eventually, though the move from representation to
expression and abstraction also began to influence photography, and photographers
began to produce abstract images (see, for example some of the photographs
of the US photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, who used the term pure photography.
Above, is The Terminal, (1892), below
is Equivalent (1926). The first is a realistic winter picture of a
horse drawn tram terminal, in New York, the second is an expressive, abstract
photo, the title refers to an image equialent to anemotional state. These
and other Stieglitz photos can be found here:
Expressionism
emerged in painting and in literature in Germany and Austria around 1905.
They were strongly influenced by the wild, exciting colours used by Van Gogh,
(Please visit my homepage to see some of Van Gogh’s art). The German
artists formed the group called Die Brucke, the Bridge, meaning the
Bridge to the Future. These artists included Ernst Kirchner (1880 - 1938),
Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and a little later Emile
Nolde, and Max Pechstein, among others. In Austria, the leading artist was
Oskar Kokoschka (1886 - 1980), Examples of their art can be seen on my homepage,
and also at this internet site:
Expressionist
painters were influenced by the paintings Van
Gogh, who used bright, unreal colours, for expressive reasons. This can
be seen in the contrast of two paintings of cafés; of Van Goch’s
Starry Night and Vlaminck’s
Restaurant at Marly-le-Roi. Expressionist artists also used German and
Nordic folk myths and art techniques, of the European Middle Ages, of between
1000 — 1453. They also used art techniques and ideas of non-European
art, such as African and Asian arts. These produced by carving images on wood,
the wood is inked and pressed onto paper. This prints rough images with very
strong, strange angles. The Expressionist painters used the 11th
to 15th century German art techniques of woodcuts. We can be seen
examples of this in the prints below. The one on the left is the The Gang,
(ND), and the one on the right is the Wounded Soldiers (1915), both by the
artist, Heckel o Schmidt-Rottluff.
Between 1914 and 1918, Europe was involved
in a horrendous and bloody war, and these events can be seen in some of the
Expressionists paintings, the woodcut on the right. The
wood print below is the Wounded Soldiers (1915), both by the artist, Heckel
o Schmidt-Rottluff.
The European bloody war can also be seen in this
painting below, by the artist Ernest Ludwig Kirchner:
Two concepts
in painting that are of interest to us are representation and expression.
Representation, is the showing objects or people in paintings, for
example.. Expression is showing feelings, emotions or personality of
the painter. A good comparison is a mirror and a lamp; the mirror reflects
things, and the lamp shed light on things, the emotions are perhaps coloured
light. The first attempts to show external reality, the second attempts to
the internal feelings and understandings of artists. Expressionist artists
wanted to paint very strong emotions, sometimes crazy emotions, more than
real objects as we see them in the world. They wanted to paint wild emotions,
the world of dreams. They also used ancient myth to give ideas and to compose
their art works. They used exaggeration and illusion, in their paintings,
to show a what they thought was a truer reality, and they did not want to
give the illusion of a normal everyday reality. In the early decades of modernism
this brought heated arguments over the way art should be produced and the
ideas that it should express. The debated focused on realism and what representation
meant for art and artists. This was true whether these artists were writers,
painters, photographers, or film makers, for example.
To use representational art means that
the artist shows the world and people as they are, to be realistic. However,
some modernists argued that real life, social life was not clearly logical.
They argued because of this the images of realist arts were not true to life.
For cinema, that the picture presented in classic narrative was not true of
real life either. The modernists argued that as real life was contradictory,
then the arts need to be contradictory to reveal that too; that they needed
to represent a contradictory, alienated and insane world. The Expressionist
dramatist is quoted as writing: "that because his figures were ‘modern
characters’ he had deliberately made them ‘uncertain, disintegrated’."
(Kumar, 1995, p. 95). These sorts of arguments were presented as heated discussion
about modernism. The arguments raged over whether modernism should be representational,
realist and have a logical structure (as classic narrative tries to have)
or should it be imaginative, expressive and not necessarily clearly logical.
(This debate has similarities with the current discussions of the contrast
between the modern and the postmodern. With postmodernists arguing that the
world is contradictory and fractured. Postmodernists are also arguing that
the ways that we try to understand the world must also be contradictory and
fractured.)
These sorts of arguments were presented
in heated discussion about modernism in art and literature in the beginning
of the 20th century. One argument presented the view that art must
be realistic and representational to increase human understanding. By this
way of increasing human understanding it would be possible to improve individual
and social life. The other argument was that because human society and social
life were contradictory our understandings and emotions were made contradictory,
wrong, and perhaps insane. They pointed to the contradiction of Western Europe
claiming to be civilised and yet to be sending millions to war and death in
WWI. To allow us to see this sort of insanity, and to understand the true
nature of humans and the true social world, art would need to be the same.
That art would need to present the world and our human emotions and understandings
in the same way. That art would need to be contradictory and irrational to
represent human reality and the human condition. However, this stress on insanity
and on German folk myths, later would led to arguments that Expressionist
art helped the rise of Fascism in Germany. Some critics argues that the film
Dr. Caligari contributed to the rise of Fascism in Germany in the 1920s.
Key
features of Expressionism:
Art was to express emotions
Used wood block prints, influence from
pre-15th century German, Gothic art.
Influenced by the wild, strong, non-realistic
colours of Van Gogh, and Rousseau.
Expressionist artist used strong emotional
colours and wild brush strokes.
The stressed irrationality of the world,
the natural and the social world
The world of the supernatural was a strong
influence, of ghosts, magic, monsters, strange things happening, to mythic
tales, etc.
Individual alienation from the natural
world and from the social world — The individual does not feel like
they belong in either the social world or the natural world. That they
are alone and abandoned.
The impact of industrial, capitalist society
on human beings.
Expressionist
artists were inspired by ancient myths. They were particularly inspired by
German and Nordic mythology, and its tales of gods, devils, witches, magic,
spirits, religion and middle ages Christianity. The artists also picked up
some aspects of non-European art, to African art, Asian art, and tribal arts
for models, images, ideas, and a sense of the supernatural. Expressionism,
with the emphasis on emotion, insanity, German and Nordic mythology, was found
in the theatre. Expressionist theatre told strong emotional stories, often
with elements of alienation and insanity.
Expressionism and Cinema
In
cinema Expressionism first appeared in German films, inspired by Expressionism
in painting and the theatre. German Expressionist film makers included
and Robert Wiene (1881 — 1938), F. W. Murnau (1888 — 1931),and Fritz
Lang (1890 - 1976). Robert Wiene made films such as The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari (1919), Genuine (1920), and The Hands of Orlac
(1924) — click for full filmography. Murnau made films such as Nosferatu,
the Vampire (1922) one of the first Dracula films, The Last Laugh
(1924, and The Grand Duke’s Finances (1924) — — click
for full filmography. (It is possible to view Nosferatu, the Vampire,
by going to this link: http://thesync.com/ram/nosferatu_56.ram
Lang made films such as Spiders (in two parts — 1919 & 1921),
Destiny (1921), and Metropolis (1927), a film of the modern
industrial world dominating humanity, and a murder mystery M (1931)
— click for full filmography. The film that we are going to examine in
more detail, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), was the first Expressionist
film, directed by Robert Wiene, for the Decla-Bioscop company, in Germany.
It is also possible to view The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by going here:
http://thesync.com/ram/caligari56.ram
Expressionist
film makers used Expressionist painting and wood print styles to create stage
sets, and the used Expressionist theatre in their storytelling of insanity,
and illusion. Expressionist film makers wanted to use the tricks of the camera,
of technology, to create illusion. But they wanted to do so to criticise parts
of modern, industrial society. The wanted to create films that surprised,
or shocked people to change the way that they looked at and understood the
modern world. Sometimes this included revealing the illusion of the
way that cinema told its story.
As in the wood prints there is a very
strong use of black and white contrasts, in Expressionist cinema there is
a strong use of shadows, of hiding things in darkness. It is possible to see
this in these two still photographs from Dr. Caligari:
The image in the left also clearly the
shows the use of strange angles in Expressionis. This is seen in the
architecture in Dr. Caligari. Look at the angles of the window on the
left, look at the wall corner on the left. Indeed, none of the angles
in this toom are normal 90 degree angles.
On film it is easy to see things in that are
in daylight, in full sunshine. We can see clearly people, where they are,
their faces, what they have in their hands, and what they are doing. At night,
in the dark it is not so easy to see these things. There is not enough light,
we can not see people and things clearly. What we cannot see, gives us the
sense of danger, of hidden people, or monsters, or ghosts, who want to harm.
In film, shadow and darkness is used to create uncertainty and fear. This
was one of the key innovations of Expressionist films. Expressionists used
darkness and shadow to give their films a stronger feeling of fear,
and anxiety. We can see this in the stills below, from Murnau’s
Nosferatu:
We saw the influence of Expressionism in Rear
Window, especially at the end of the film, Jeff is sitting in his darkened
room, we hear Thorwald's footsteps as he climbs the stairs to the room, we see
the light appear in the crack of the opening door, the killer enters Jeff’s
apartment… we see only his face and glasses, we see only a part of Jeff;
is the killer coming closer, we can only hear his feat. All of these increase
our uncertainty, our fear, our anxiety. This seen also
in these stills from Fritz Lang’s later film M:
Innocence, as a child, is threatened by the shadow slowly
falling over her...
Peter Lorre, in shadow and darkness, is terrified at
seeing his own image in a mirror. Notice also the M, for murder.
A graphic poster for the film.
The image of the world in Expressionist cinema
is of an insane world. They developed unusual camera perspectives that gave
strange picture angles. By this method, buildings look as though they tower
above people, the look as if they are going to fall over. Cities and buildings
do no look like they provide a safe environment for people, but they look
as wild as a forest full of wolves and vampires. They look like they are going
to collapse and provide hiding places for thieves, robbers, and killers. By
this method the world looks out of the individual’s control, even of
the film's hero; we ask, can the hero find the answers, master and control
all of the events in the film in such a chaotic world? By this method the
world looks threatening, chaotic, and contradictory. We saw this in the first
still from Dr. Caligari, above. Now we can see this odd use of camera
perspective even more clearly in the image below from Metropolis:
The use of ancient myth is found in the story
of Caligari, which is said to be based on the recurrence of an 11th
Century myth. Thus, the tale told in the myth is said to be describing real
events, which are again occuring in Germany. This is reproduiced beow in th
first intertitle for Dr. Caligari:
It is also found in the themes of Nosferatu,
the tale of Dracula the Vampire, and number of other Expressionist films,
such as the Spider.
The German Expressionist film
making had a very short life. It began at the end of WWI, 1918 / 1919, and
ended 1926. The main difficulty was the cost of making the films. In the U.S.,
there is the sunny dry climate of California, and a potential audience of
nearly 200 million English speakers; in Germany the climate was darker, so
the films had to be made indoors with enormous stage sets, and a lot of artificial
lighting, all of this is very expensive. The film that ended Expressionist
film making in Germany was Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926). The
film budget started at 1,900,000 marks, but it cost 5,000,000 marks to make.
the film. This film required the construction of a futuristic city in the
Studio, seen in this photograph:
This is a still showing the city of Metropolis. This is a futuristic vision
of elevated highways, and helicopters and aeroplanes flying between buildings.
(Similar to today's Tokyo?) Below is a night picture of the city:
The film was a financial failure, and there
were no more attempts at such great productions again. This film has strongly
influenced the vision of the City in many films since, e.g., Blade Runner,
Batman), and M, 1931, a detective film of a child serial murderer,
it has also been used recently for music videos.
The City inlater films, Blade Runner
(1982, Riddley Scott), above, Batman Returns (1992,Tim Burton) below:
In these sets you can also see the lingering effect of odd
camera perspectives too.
The specific influences of Expressionism
on films are:
The influence Expressionist painting can be seen in the
way the film set was painted and built.
There is a strong use of darkness and light, especially
of shadow.
There is also use of strange angles in making Expressionist
cinema, strange camera perspectives.
The story is sometimes taken from Gothic myth, the 14th
century, e.g., Caligari, Dracula, ghosts.
The supernatural has a very strong place in the film.
There is the appearance of irrationality, in the world,
in the people, and in the story.
Emotions are strongly expressed.
The film and the world appear to be insane.
An insane world is not a place where there is a happy ending.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
"...the success of The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari was a major artistic event which was to dominate the entire
future development of the art of cinema." (Langlois in Rould ed.,
1980 p. 422)
Cast of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
(1919) - Daclau-Bioscop - Germany:
Actor:
Character:
Werner Krauss
Dr. Caligari
Conrad Veidt
Cesare
Friedrich Feher
Francis
Lil Dagover
Jane
Hans Heinrich von Twardowski
Alan
Rudolf Lettinger
Dr. Olson
Rudolf Klein-Rogge
A Criminal.
As an example of Expressionist cinema we shall
watch, Robert Wiene’s film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It is
this last film which we shall watch, as it was the first Expressionist film
and it shows very clearly Expressionist film making ideas. Robert Wiene made
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920, and The Hands of Orlac in1924,
tells the story of a pianist who loses his hands in a train accident. In hospital
he is given the hands of an executed murder and these hands begin to control
him.
The film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
at first gives the impression that it will follow the classic narrative model
in story telling. It begins with two men sitting on a bench. A strange, dream
like woman passes them, and then one man tells a story to the other man. He
tells a story of a travelling fare, with some attractions coming to town.
He is going to narrate a story with a beginning — a murder — a middle
— more murders and investigations — and an end… But, what kind
of end is this?
One
of the attractions was a man who had been sleeping for 20 years, and who wakes
up only occasionally. He can be wakened only by Dr. Caligari, his master.
When he wakes he can tell people what will happen to them in their future.
He is wakened at the fair and he tells a man that he will die that night.
The man is killed that night and in the town a number of murders begin to
happen. Who is doing these murders, and why? Francis and the police try to
find out…
From the point when the camera fades to
Dr. Caligari, the audience is told a story, a story that begins to resemble
the classic narrative model:
There is a puzzle, a murder, the town clerk, and another
murder, of Alan.
There is an attempt to find the killer.
There is a sense that time is chronological, we see evidence
of morning, evening, night, morning, day, evening night.
The actions of people seem to drive events; e.g., Cesare
murders, Francis investigates.
There is a sequence of events of cause and effect.
The story has some possibility of being true.
However,
this is not a classic narrative film.
From
the beginning we seen that there are some things which are not right, that
are not normal, that do not fit the classical narrative:
There is no verisimilitude in the location of the events.
The location looks strange, it does not look like the real world.
The time sequence does not follow the classic narrative
model of looking like natural time.
The murder is supposed to be a sleep walker, who has slept
for many years and who has supernatural powers to tell the future.
The murderer is supposed to be hypnotised and under the
control of Dr. Caligari.
There are clues that this is not exactly classic
narrative. These clues become stronger as the film proceeds.
All of the set on the film is painted. There are no 90 degree
angles in any of the buildings or things, it looks like a town afteer an earthquake.
It is painted to look like a crazy world. It looks like a very frightening
world. There is a very strong uses of shadow, of darkness, and light. It looks
like a world out of control and very dangerous. It is a world as in your dreams,
or more truly, our nightmares.
The events are driven by the actions of the
characters, and there is hero, Alan’s friend. The events appear to follow
natural time. But we are aware that the story is being told from the present
of the past. That someone in the present is telling a story of what happened
in the past. The sequences of film are joined together in that sort of time
sequence. Thus the time sequences flow like this:
Time Sequences in Caligari: For
the beginning of the film:
Now
Sometime in the pas
Now
Sometime in the past
Now
Sometime in the past
The beginning of the film is the murder, the
middle of the film is told as if it is a story following natural time when
more murders happen. There also seems to be a logical end to the film, when
Cesare stopped from murdering Jane, he dies and the police try to arrest Dr.
Caligari. However, this is not the end of the film. At the end of the film,
the time sequence moves into the future, it moves to the story tellers sitting
on the bench.
The film uses the model of classic narrative,
our desire to interpret a film in a meaningful way to show us how we can be
tricked. The time sequence only looks like a normal time sequence.
The film director is in the same position
as the person telling the story at the beginning of the film. The director
plans the telling of the story, and makes the film according to that plan.
The director has a plan of the beginning, the middle and the end. The director,
as the storyteller leads you through the story. But, this director is showing
the storytelling method. The time fluctuates from the present into the past,
and into the present, and so on until at the end, the film takes the story
a little beyond the time that it started with. Time does not move in a single
direction in this film. That what appeared to be realistic, verisimilitude,
was not at all realistic.
At
the last sequence of the film we discover that the person who has been telling
the story of the film is a patient in a hospital. The hospital is not an ordinary
hospital, it a hospital for the mentally ill, and the person in charge of
the hospital is Dr. Caligari. Also, many of the other characters in the film
are shown to be patients in that hospital, e.g., Cesare, Jane, Jane’s
father. The film shows a world of insanity not sanity, of dream not reality.
We learn that the story tellers cannot be relied on. That the might not have
been telling the truth all along, and that what we have watched is not a true
story. That what we have watched might have been the product of insane people
in an asylum. Thus, we do not have everything answered at the end, and the
world appears not to be logical and orderly, but rather insane and full of
deceptions.
The
people look like they could be real people, people we see in the everyday
world. At the end, we learn that these people were not the people that we
thought they were at the beginning. We find out that film can very cleverly
deceive us while pretending to be telling the truth; that it lies to us that
it is telling a true story.
That deception is a clear point in the
film is revealed also in the stress on hypnotism. Hypnotism plays a strong
role in the film; Caligari hypnotises Cesare to control him. But we should
also think that perhaps film can hypnotise. That the flickering image on the
screen perhaps hypnotises us, captures and controls our emotions, our emotional
and physical reactions to the camera images. That the flickering images showing
people and events hypnotise in same way as the swinging watch can hypnotise.
It is a film about the power of cinema to trick as well as to reveal, because
in the end the film reveals that we have been tricked.
The Persistent Influences of Expressionist
Film Making Techniques on Later Film Making
Some of the films that have influences from Expressionist
film making techniques. Expressionists were very
influential for a style of film called film noir, of the private detective
genre of murder and suspense. Alfred Hitchcock started making film in Germany
at the time of Expressionist cinema and his films are strongly influenced
by it. Other more recent films with Expressionist influence: It is possible
to see the influence of Exprssionism, in Science fiction films, for example,
on Seven, Heat, Blade Runner… The two images below
compare the robot of Metropolis,, with C-P3), of Star Wars:
This image of Catwoman, also resembles the Metropolis robot::
The city views of Metropolis can be compared with those in Blade
Runner (197?), two pictures below:
And also,Batman Returns (1992):
We saw the influence of Expressionism in Rear Window,
especially at the end of the film when the killer enters Jeff’s apartment…
we see only his face and glasses, we see only a part of Jeff; is the killer
coming closer, we can only hear his feat. All of these increase our uncertainty,
our fear, our anxiety.
This list is endless, although the movement was
short lived in Germany, the aesthetics of German Expressionist cinema have
had enormous continuing impact on film making. I will show you some of these
images on my homepage and next week.
Conclusion
Cinema,
a new form of communication at the beginning of the 20th century
attracted the attention of many different types of people. I said before that
cinema could either tell stories of the real world or of the imagination.
The contrasting options of film telling stories of the real world or of imagination,
were not simply a choice they were a dilemma. This was a dilemma not easily
solved, for a very simple reason; no film is completely true as life and not
cinema is completely imaginary, completely free of everyday life. The classic
narrative implies a completeness, there is a beginning a middle and a conclusion,
there is a enigma, a series of events, and in the conclusion all questions
are answered. But, one very interesting point about Rear Window, is that we
never see the murder which is the centre of the movie. We do not see very
much of the murderer either. Our imagination is asked to fill in many
spaces and complete the story.
Created
at the end of the 19th century, cinema was quickly influenced by
20th century modern art movements. At the beginning of the 20th
century there began an explosion of creativity in the arts. In painting and
literature, for example, many modern art appeared. Two modern art movements
that emerged in the early 20th century that had significant influence
on cinema technique were Expressionism and Surrealism.
In cinema Expressionism was very important
for the introduction of new techniques of camerawork and of story telling.
Surrealism stressed more the unconscious and dream world, imagination in making
movies, for them this was greater reality. Both, Expressionism and Surrealism
questioned the honesty of classic narrative cinema. That like every good liar,
the liar always promise the truth, but really they are not telling the truth.
Thus, Expressionist and Surrealist cinema criticised classic narrative as
false; their films suggest:
that the audience is not told everything, that they
need to add information themselves based on what the see or hear,
that interpretations of events in the film vary, that the
meaning of the film’s events are not obvious for everyone,
that the set and the characters are not truly realistic,
they only look realistic,
that the film does not portray real time but a carefully
a manipulated cinema time,
that the hero cannot and does know and control all the
important events in the film,
that film can not have a completely logical structure,
nor does a film have a conclusion that answers all of the
questions it raises.
However, they also argued that real life was
not clearly logical either. That the picture presented in classic narrative
is not true of real life either. The modernists argued that as real life was
contradictory, then the arts need to be contradictory to reveal that too.
These sorts of arguments were presented as heated discussion about modernism.
The arguments raged over whether modernism should be representational and
have a logical structure (as classic narrative tries to have) or should it
be imaginative, expressive and not necessarily clearly logical. These arguments
are similar to current arguments between modernism and postmodernism.
Expressionists
were very influential for a style of film called film noir, of the private
detective, of murder and suspense. Alfred Hitchcock started making film in
Germany at the time of Expressionist cinema and his films are strongly influenced
by it. Other more recent films with Expressionist influence; Seven,
Heat, Blade Runner… This list is endless, although the
movement was short lived in Germany, the aesthetics of German Expressionist
cinema have had enormous continuing impact on film making. I will show you
some of these images on my homepage and next week.
There is one point that should not be
forgotten with Caligari. Faced with the strong competition of big business
cinema from Hollywood, European cinema makers had to find a different way
to compete. Caligari and Expressionist cinema provided the basis for one of
these lasting strategies, the art cinema. They stressed that cinema was an
art, equal to the other arts of the novel, poetry, theatre, painting, music,
photography, etc. Furthermore, as with all of these other arts, they were
saying that cinema could examine as difficult subjects as these arts, that
cinema could do this as intellectually, and philosophically as any of the
other arts.
References:
Chipp. Herschel B., (ed.) 1968. Theories
of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics. University of California
Press.
Cook, Pam. 1986 The Cinema Book. British
Film Institute. London.
Gombrich, Ernest, 19?? The Story of Art
Kracauer, Sigfried, 1947
From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of German
Cinema
Vincendeau, Gene. (ed.) 1995 Encyclopedia
of European Cinema. Cassel & British Film Institute. London.
