Monday 17 September 2012

German Expressionism


German Expressionism and the Influence of an Era
by Peter Morris

German expressionism has been credited as one of the most influential art movements in cinema history.  Its 15 year peak, from 1917 to 1933, created a new force of ideas and styles that can still be seen and felt today, and it is seen as one of the earliest movements of art from paintings to the cinema screen.  The works of Fritz Lang, Robert Wiene and Erich Pommer amongst others brought this movement to life with films such as The Cabinet of Dr, Caligari, Nosferatu, M and Metropolis.  These film-makers along with F.W. Murnau, cinematographer Karl Freund and many others brought this unique and revolutionarily dark and moody style to audiences across the world.  An audience then, in the 1920s, and still now, over 90 years later.  Their influence on modern cinema is startling and their effect allowed for the creation of some of the most extreme elements of current film-making styles.


German Expressionism – Born from Despair

Germany 1917 – World War 1 was destroying Germany and much of Europe.  The German people had endured despair and horror on equal measures as their ultra-nationalist government continued fighting in an unending war.  It was out of this horror that German expressionism in cinema was born.

Near the end of 1917 the German military’s propaganda division struck a deal with a number of production companies to create the Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA) in a vain attempt to boost the morale of a people suffering the hardships of a nation at war.  As a result of Germany loosing the war in 1918 massive economical controls were placed on the nation by the victorious Allies.  As a result imports into Germany were heavily restricted and because of this the influence of Hollywood on German film-makers was very limited.  These factors plus the creation of the open-minded Ufa allowed for a unique creative situation in Germany.  This independent development, cut off from the rest of the world, allowed for the expansion of unique styles within the German borders.  Thus, German expressionism as a movement in cinema was born.  The Ufa took the helm of German cinema and was nearly wholly responsible for the development of German expressionist films between 1918 and 1933 when Hitler’s Nazi Party took control over the Weimar Republic under which the Ufa had freedom to create and develop the German expressionist style.  The Ufa took over nearly all the production companies in Germany including their directors, actors, set designers and writers.  This massive pool of resources increased the quality of German cinema a great deal and this pooling of creative minds developed German expressionist cinema.  As a result of the unstable economic situation in Germany, mass export was necessary.  This worked well for Ufa who now saw a massive market for their films and in 1919 Ufa produced its first truly expressionist film to receive notoriety abroad, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and director Robert Wiene and producer Erich Pommer created the epitome of expressionism in their dark tale of a hypnotist and his minion.

What is German Expressionism?

“All human action is expressive; a gesture is an intentionally expressive action. All art is expressive – of its author and of the situation in which he works – but some art is intended to move us through visual gestures that transmit, and perhaps give release to emotions and emotionally charged messages.  Such art is expressionist”.  This principle as described by art historian Norbert Lynton was at the core of the German expressionist movement in cinema.  The dark and gothic mindset of the film-makers was transferred onto the screen using some specially designed, key techniques – heavily contrasted black and white photography, long tracking shots, exaggerated angles and intrusive off-angle set designs.  The use of shadows also gave an ominous mood to the screen, the most famous example being the shadow of Max Schreck in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) as he ascends the staircase towards his victim.


Most expressionist films were set in the urban underworld allowing the director to play with the looming cityscapes and the industrial face of complex cities.  The director plays with the viewer using reflective windows, tilted roofs and in all creating a truly surreal and dream like atmosphere.

Even the characters themselves have exaggerated and off-kilter make-up, again playing with the unease of the viewer.  All these factors comprise what essentially is needed for a film to be in the expressionist style and for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), the inclusion of all these factors make it the true original German expressionist film in cinema history.
Over the next 12 years Ufa produced many expressionist films that gained world-wide recognition – Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), and Fritz Lang’s M (1931) and Metropolis (1927), however, the true influence of German expressionism on the future of film would come from the arrival of Adolf Hitler

When the Nazi Party took power in Germany in 1933 the relative artistic freedom of German cinema was finished.  Along with the Dawe’s Plan, which was established in 1924 by the US Government to stabilise the German economy which in turn caused the budgets of films to rise dramatically and curtailed the export of many of the expressionist projects, the German film industry began to collapse.  The volume of expressionist films being made in Germany steadily decreased and eventually ceased in 1933.  The fascist Nazi government were in power and the anti-Semitic and anti-liberal policies forced many of the key expressionists to flee to America and especially to Hollywood.  And it was here where the influence of German expressionism began to be, and still is, being felt today, as directors such as Lang and Billy Wilder brought their new style of film-making to the masses, via the Hollywood machine.
  
The German Influence

The emigration of many of the masters of German expressionism to Hollywood in the early 30s led to their style, honed in Germany the previous decade, to be drip fed into the Hollywood mainstream.  The majority of Hollywood films up until that point were slapstick comedy or moralistic tales void of depth, however, the influence of these German artists brought a sense of mood and dark style to the cinema screens.  One of the first signs of this was the film noir genre which gained much popularity around the beginning of the 40s, with films such as The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Double Indemnity (1944). Film noir was almost like a refined look at the expressionist elements of urban settings, foreboding shadows and the darker side of the underworld, that these German directors had worked with previously.

It is, of course, no coincidence that it was German émigré Billy Wilder, who had learnt his trade during the expressionist movement, had directed Double Indemnity (1944), Ace in the Hole (1951) and the brilliant Sunset Boulevard (1950).   Wilder, along with Fritz Lang (who directed noir classics such as The Big Heat (1953) and The Woman in the Window (1944)) went on to be prolific film-makers in Hollywood over the following decades.
However, the influence of German Expressionism goes far past that of film noir.  Modern day film-makers such as Tim Burton, David Cronenburg and David Lynch have all been influenced by expressionist styles.  Johnny Depp’s character Edward Scissorhands in Tim Burton’s film of the same name is generally regarded as taking its influence from Dr. Caligari’s assistant, Cesare, in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).  Both characters are dressed all in black with white sullen faces, both tall and both thin, with both walking at a strange and peculiar slow pace.  This look was repeated again for Brandon Lee’s character in Wes Craven’s The Crow (1994).  Burton again tips his hat to the expressionist movement with Batman and Batman Returns (1992), even naming Christopher Walken’s character Max Schreck after the actor who played the lead in Nosferatu (1922).  Even the look of Gotham City resembles that of the cityscapes in Metropolis (1927).

Metropolis features again in the works of Tim Burton with the futuristic assembly line machinery seen in Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2006).  Tim Burton is just one of the countless film-makers who has seen the beauty of mise-en-scene in German expressionism and felt an obligation to try to replicate this beauty in their own works.

Nearly 90 years after its development the movement known as German expressionism is still influencing the minds and actions of not just film-makers, but artists and audiences alike.  This movement, born out of a mindset of despair and tragedy, has grown so readily that many modern cultural icons can find their roots in Germany during the 1920s, in the minds of Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Robert Wiene, Erich Pommer and Karl Freund.  They represent the power of belief and resilience and the ability to bring from the shadows of an empire to the minds of an entire century.


Bibliography and References

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