German Expressionism

Background

Scene from the movie "Metropolis"

Expressionism is the movement in the fine arts that emphasized the expression of one’s inner self and their angst rather than solely being realistic and fanboyish about the world and life. Expressionism was a reaction to impressionism which projected stark and absolute realities. Expressionists sought to reverse this trend in the arts and wished to portray allegorical worlds which were in themselves metaphors for what people were experiencing at the time. Originally starting out as a movement in painting and sculpture it quickly spread to the fledgling movie industry in Europe where Expressionism had started. The majority of film expressionists came from the nation of Germany, hence why the term German Expressionism is so popular when describing this movement in film. However there were numerous film makers who conveyed Expressionist themes but were not German .

Style and History

Scene from "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." Notice the warped and distorted look of the set.

Germany at the time had just recovered from the consequences of World War I. Just like their fellow Germans, German Expressionists directors film felt disillusioned with reality and the world around them. As a result they made films that looked warped and distorted and were extremely surreal. German expressionist directors then toke their disillusionment one step further by having heavy and stark shadows, depressed/dark stories, and corruptible and untrustable characters. As many Germans had felt betrayed by their government when World War I had concluded many German Expressionist directors projected authority figures as villains to convey a sense of how no one could be trusted in the world they were living in. For example in the movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari the main antagonist was a doctor. Further coupled with their mise en scene direction Expressionist directors wanted viewers to look beyond the characters on the screen and examine the world the characters were interacting in.

Scene from the movie "Nosferatu." Notice the hard and supersaturate shadows.

There were other common motifs with this movement of filmmaking. Movies such as Metropolis conveyed a growing sense of skepticism towards industrialism and the roles that society had placed on its citizens. Other movies projected a sense of persecution that certain ethnic minorities were feeling and witnessing as Germany was trying to recover and rebuild after the Great War. In the movie The Golem: How He Came into the World, a Jewish community feels so persecuted and discriminated against that they create a golem to protect them. This highlights the growing amount of religious persecution and intolerance many minorities people were facing at the time, especially in Germany. These were all mature and real issues and situations that had a fantasy component that allowed the director to over stylize and highlight what they felt was worth noting. It was this fantasy component that also freed the director creatively thus giving him free realm to set his story in any time and in any place.

The End of the Movement and Getting into the USA

Unfortunately German Expressionism was a short lived movement of film (from ~1920-1933). The reason for this is simple. By the 1930s a certain German dictator had gained complete control of the German government and discredited German Expressionism as a degenerate art and established propaganda as the dominant style of film making in Germany. However this did not mark the end of the road for Expressionists. As a result of their persecution many expressionist directors left their home nation and found themselves immigrating to a land of glitz and glamor—Hollywood, California. While German silent and sound cinema was arguably far ahead of cinema in Hollywood in terms of cinematography and different in tone and mood, German directors found American movie studios willing to embrace them and find their movie projects. the results from this would shape the backbone of American cinema forever.

Influence on Early American Horror

Nosferatu, the most important horror villain created by German Expressionists. Compare to Edward Scissorhands.

Hollywood at first saw expressionist directors from Germany as best suited to direct horror movies which were just starting to gain popularity when they arrived in the USA. In fact some studios, like Universal would go onto to support and publish numerous projects run by German expatriates to great finanacial success. Examples of this include Dracula (1931) and The Mummy (1932), by Karl Freund and The Black Cat (1934), directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, which are now all considered horror classics. However the number of movies under the direct control of German movie makers was not the full extent of their influence on American horror films. When the German movie industry became the forefront of movie making many American directors visited and learned film making from German institutions and universities.

During German Expressionism's height the German film studio Universum Film AG (UFA), was one of the most significant champions of the movement and the art of film making in the country. There were myriads of foreign staff and directors who worked at and visited the UFA. One of the most important people to have visted UFA would eventually become one of the most important directors of Hollywood— Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock was sent to work on the German film The Blackguard. As a result similarities between Hitchock's films and German Expressionism are quite clear. The direction seen in some of Hitcock’s films like Psycho or The Lodger all feature super saturated shadows and zoomed in camera angles which he learned about when studying at the UFA. Hitchcock himself was very open about the importance of German expressionism on his style of film making even going so far as to say that:

"I have acquired a strong German influence by working at the UFA studios [at] Berlin."

However Hitchcock is only one example of many, but he stands as one of the most notable examples of a Western director learning from German Expressionism and applying it with Western film making techniques.

Creating the Foundation for Film Noir

Scene from the movie "The Big Combo." Notice the low camera angle and saturated shadows as well as the fog. All techniques perfected by German Expressionist directors and cinematographers

Film Noir is oftentimes credited with having made Hollywood Hollywood, and with good reason. This style of film making proved to one of the most important movements in American film history. It established the imprint of American directors such as Orson Welles, who would go onto inspire numerous filmmakers to come. However this all would not have happened if weren’t for the helping hand of German Expressionism. As it has already been noted German Expressionists came to Hollywood to find greater opportunities in the film industry, and they did. Josef von Sternberg, an Auatrian exile would go onto make films such as Shanghai Express (1932) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935). These two pulpy erotic films would help establish the motif of the femme fatale for American directors. Sternberg proved to be one of the most influential filmmakers for the aforementioned Orson Welles’s, especially for his magnum opus Citizen Kane which features numerous film techniques and motifs very similar to Sternberg’s earlier works. Techniques such as low camera angles and strategic lighting had all been well known techniques utilized by Sternberg and latter by Wells Also similar to German Expressionist films is the character Charles Foster Kane. Kane starts out as an "every man," who feels in someway disillusioned by the world around him just like many of the protagonists in German Expressionist works.

Influence on Modern Day Film

Scene from the movie "Blade Runner" compare to the "Metropolis" image

Directors today still point to German Expressionism as the source of their inspiration. The two most well known examples are Ridley Scott, Paul Verhoeven and Tim Burton. Tim Burton would go onto emulate the German Expressionist vision for many of his early works and continues to create Expressionist world in some of his later films like Sweeney Todd. However the most clear cut example would be Burton's film Edward Scissorhands, who is actually a take on of the character in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Ridley Scott would emulate German Expressionism in his epic science fiction movie, Blade Runner. In it we see many of the same themes highlighted in the movie Metropolis and many setpieces that emulate earlier works. Paul Verhoeven cited Metropolis as the most important film to him while filming RoboCop, wanting the design of the titular character to be a male version the robot Maria.