October 8^th, 2002

  More than any other national movement in the history of film, German Expressionism was an answer to the grim reality of daily life. But it was not so much a direct relay of life to art. Rather, it was more of a filter; a way of assembling the clutter of post-war Germany to coherence on the screen. It was a way to represent and bring across the reality few could imagine. Sex murders, depression, veterans ghoulishly mangled in the war, the loss of innocence and complete rejection of the past were the things the German people dealt with during the post-war years of 1919 – 1929 (commonly called the Weimar Period in film history). The films produced in Germany during those years captured the cry of a broken nation and a people horrified by the every-day.

  Before the Great War, German film was not nearly as technologically or thematically sophisticated as other European film. Until 1910, most German films consisted of short, pornographic snippets and crude day-in-the-life anecdotes. Only the works of Oskar Messter showed even the most minute level of innovation. He implemented the close-up, artificial lighting and even some experimentation with sound. But not until right before the start of the war did Germany begin to produce truly innovative work. Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague) (1913, dir. Guido Seeber) – commonly considered early Expressionism – explored the theme of the “deep and fearful concern with the foundations of self”^[1]. With Student, the foundation for German Expressionism in film was laid.

  In 1914, the Great War began in Europe, cutting Germany off from its usual supply of international cinema. German filmmakers were therefore unaware of the innovation of technique D.W. Griffith had achieved in Birth of a Nation (1915). The only films imported into Germany during the war years were from Denmark and Sweden. However, Sweden and Denmark simply didn’t produce enough films and so, in 1917, the German film studio Universum Film-Aktiengesellschaft (UFA) was founded. UFA remained the largest European film production studio until World War II. After the German defeat in 1918, UFA went on to become a sizable competitor with Hollywood. Expressionism, with the help of nation-wide abolition of censorship in 1919 and the intellectuals’ adoption of cinema, was hailed as a new way of expressing a new world. “Germany’s young artists were ready to accept it as a new means of communicating with the masses. The new freedom of expression manifested itself most immediately in a series of well-mounted, independently produced pornographic films.”^[2] This “Aufklärungsfilme” (films of elucidation) phase did not last long, however, and in 1920 Das Kabinett Des Dr. Caligari, (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) (dir. Robert Wiene) one of the most important and influential Expressionist films, was released.

  With the outbreak of sex murders – violent sexual crimes in which a victim was not raped but savagely violated in a sexual manner as a means of murder – the German people had yet another horrific product of war to fear. Dr. Caligari plays off of those fears by telling the story of a traveling magician with a hypnotized servant who does his master’s murderous bidding under the cover of night. In addition to being thematically appropriate for the time, Dr. Caligari also contains some of the most identifiably Expressionist examples of mise en scene. Due to budget constrains, the set could not be lit enough to produce the kind of dramatic lighting that Expressionism required. Instead, lighting effects were painted directly on the scenery and sets, creating an even more Expressionist vision. The hard contrast of white and black rays on the walls gives the sense that the action is taking place in the confines of a woodcut, a popular medium for Expressionist art at the time. The sets are also elaborately ridiculous in terms of architectural impossibility. Houses and walls sit atop each other and curve down onto the streets, entombing them in shadows. Every set is populated by numerous paper cut-outs, whether they are trees, houses or chimneys on a rooftop. Nothing seems real but together, the pieces of the world of Caligari create their own reality.

  In some ways, Expressionism was an inevitable movement in Germany. Its seeds were planted before World War I and probably would’ve grown even if the war did not give the German people a thirst for such dark artistic expression. But only with the help of the war could Expressionism become as mainstream as it did. It might’ve continued to surface as a modern art movement but would have doubtfully flourished past that. With a bombardment of disturbing post-war imagery in every-day life, the German people needed a way for art to categorize and assemble these images into coherent forms of expression. Two-Dimensional mediums such as woodcuts and graphic novels of those woodcuts along with film after film relaying the darkness viewers had come to see as commonplace accomplished just that. The silence of the cinema provided an extra degree of depth to Expressionism as well, allowing the viewer to be fully immersed in the caustic imagery he or she was fed. Not until the late thirties and early forties did America begin to experiment with styles similar to Expressionism. The Noir of the forties can be seen as a successor to Expressionism. With its sharp shadows and dark streets, Noir provided the American movie-goer with the style of Expressionism without the depressing social background. Many German directors, in fleeing the Nazis, came to America and directed some of these films. The deficit of talent crippled the German film industry, as did World War II. It would not recover until decades later. But the Expressionist movement marks one of the most important times in the evolution of film.

^[1] Cook, pg. 103
^[2] Cook, pg. 107