Study Guide 2.ReOrganised - GERMANEXPRESSIONISM( German...

EUROPEAN FILM MOVEMENTS POST WORLD WAR I
GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM
(refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in before
the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s)
FEATURES OF GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM
German Expressionism (1920s-Nazism)
 An alternative to the Classic Hollywood narrative
 Connected to expressionism as it rejects conventions of naturalism and realism
 Figurative/surreal expression
 Abstract and does not portray “real” truth
 Extreme distortion to express inner emotion
 Frames stories embedded within longer narrative structures
 Competitive with French and American films until the war
Low-key lighting (chiaroscuro) and other visual conventions of German
Expressionism
 Low-key lighting (chiaroscuro)
a. Uses shadows  three point lighting
b. Interplay of light and shadow
 Camera Angles (vs. eye-level camera)
 Moving Camera (vs. stationary camera)
 Represents narrative thematics to support notions of loss of individual will and
chaotic social world
Narrative thematics of German Expressionism
 Loss of individual will  anti hero (vs. Hollywood’s Heroic subject)
 Characters with internal conflicts
a. Criticised for no happy endings
b. What is the right/correct action?
 Focused on pathological and/or unnatural (vs. naturalism and Hollywood style)
German Expressionist techniques to represent subjectivity
 Mise en scene
 Exaggeration distortion and repetition
 Slower pace
 False perspective
VM 100 study sheet for exam 2, p. 1

 Unnatural narrative (vampire in Nosferatu)
Mise-en-scene
 All the elements placed in front of the camera to be photographed/filmed:
o Setting and props, lighting, costumes and makeup, and figure behaviour.
 Emphasis on the composition of individual shots (overall design rather than specific
elements)
Non-linear narrative (framing device)
 Illustrated in “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”
 A style to create exotic and fantastic settings that were remote from contemporary
reality
 Represents subjectivity
 Story within a story (e.g let me tell you about when…)
 Creates the expressionist notion of distress with moving image
 Images of space as they connect overtime
Kammerspielfilm
 Kammerspielfilme (the plural form) formed a German film movement of the
1920s silent film period that was developed around the same time as the more
commonly known Expressionist movement in cinema.
 “Chamber drama” film
 The named derives from a theatre, the Kammerspiele, opened in 1906 by the major
stage director, Max Reinhardt, to stage intimate dramas for small audiences
 Contemporary stories, the socially disenfranchised
 More naturalistic
 Character’s will is dominated by a new (urban) order
 Concentrates on a few characters and explores a crisis in their lives
ENTITIES AND PERSONALITIES IN THE ERA OF GERMAN
EXPRESSSIONISM
Deutsche Bioscope, Decla Bioscop, UFA and Studio Babelsberg
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