by Feed your head with a play by Pamela Olson

Created on: August 27, 2008

German, Japanese & Indian Cinema, and why live in LA if you're not involved in the movie business?

Expressionism in The Cinema

Film critics assigned a single term, Expressionism, to define the German Golden Age of film. Because Hitler took control of the German film industry in 1933, it turned out to be a short era. In 1919, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was released. This film is still today considered a classic and is still in great demand. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the culmination of the German government's screen antidote attempt to overcome Hollywood's stereotype of the inwardly corrupt, outwardly refined and thoroughly brutal German being popularized by Erich von Stroheim in American war films.

I find The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to be a highly disturbing film. So did others as this film intensely affected German filmmakers and goers for the decades. It is a story of supreme horror with murder and superhuman powers, and a plot of horror anchored within reality. Fritz Lang conceived this idea for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from Henry James The Turning of the Screw and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The decor of the film reflects the too cold, too bare, too somnambulistic inner of Francis as he unveils his horrifying tale. The walls and angles are impossible, and there are only shadows as no sun exists in this film. Although this film is excellent in its decor, it is its total ambiguity that enriched and leaped this film into a classic. There are no answers in this film.

Known to the world as Ufa, the Universum Film A.G. was the German equivalent of Hollywood. It had a dual mission. One, to improve the German morale at home, and two, to improve the perception of Germans in and outside of Germany. Ufa's studios were located outside Berlin at Neubabelsberg. Out of those studios was to come the most awesome examples of cinema atmosphere. And here the German camera was moved from the impartial observer to the mirror of a character. Thus was born the Expressionism, or the idea that the visible world's look and style is a mirror of internal human sensations. This idea required two systems. The first was each film's dependence on the studio as it was a completely controlled world. The second was the emphasis on the action rather than the actor. This demand resulted in the creation of a repertory of German actors performing a wide range and variety of roles. Max Reinhardt trained most of these actors.

During the Expressionism period, there were generally only two

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>