Early German Cinema
Early German Cinema was less advanced than that of Italy, France, Britain and the U.S, this is despite the fact that the Skladanowsky Brothers invented the Bioskop Projector before the Cinematograph, and had a projected showing of films in Berlin one month before the Lumiere’s Paris showing, which they attended!
In the 1910s, Germans were inspired by the Film d’art movement, which viewed film as an extension of theater leading to film adaptations of popular plays. Writers, directors and actors associated with the German Theater began to take a serious interest in film. This elevated film’s social status among the educated German class & also brought a taste for foreign films.
With war raging across Europe, Germany was cut off from its now large and appreciated supply of French, British and American films. The Germans themselves would need to fill the void and increase domestic film production. But not much was happening cinematically in Germany and they were taking a beating in World public opinion.
In 1917, Erich Ludendorff, commander of the Army, ordered the forced merger of the largest production, distribution and exhibition companies in Germany creating a nationally subsidized film conglomerate with the goal of producing films designed to enhance Germany’s image at home and abroad. It was called Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft.
Situated between the end of WW I and Hitler’s assumption of power, the Weimar Republic was an era characterized by extreme contrasts.
While suffering from the aftermath of war with political unrest, massive inflation and economic hardship, Germany’s first democracy thrived as a laboratory for unprecedented cultural achievement and social freedoms.
The government sold UFA for 25 million marks to a privately held company which immediately became the largest cartel in Germany.
The climate was ready for greatness. With a state-of-the-art studio, veteran crew, experienced talent and a favorable exchange rate, Germany now possessed the ability to competitively sell their films around the world.
Madame Dubarry - Dir. Ernst Lubitsch
Expression began around 1908 in painting and quickly spread to other art forms. It was one of the trends that reacted against realism, preferring "extreme objective distortion" to express a “subjective emotional reality.”
The story contained an anti-authoritarian message, equating unchecked power with complete and total madness.
This sentiment was a strong reaction to the old monarchy that led Germany into WWI.
Fritz Lang was brought on to direct the film ,but was replaced by the producers for the more experienced Robert Wiene.
This is why all the imagery seen in the film was expressionistic, because we were seeing the world, not objectively, as it really is, but subjectively, from the mind of a man who was mentally ill.
Caligari’s influence on cinema is its objective depiction of the internal subjective world of the character.
Most films draw attention to a single element, with the actor being the most expressive instead of sets, costume, and lighting.
But expressionist filmmakers believed the sets were acting, creating the same spiritual state as the performance of the actor.
Expressionist films had many different tactics for blending all the elements of mise-en-scene in a single shot.
Schauerfilme was the term given to a series of films that continued the production of horror and fantasy films.
Nosferatu also sought to convey the subjective state of the character, but where Caligari leaned on the elements of mise-en-scene and production design to achieve this goal, it was the least important technique of Nosferatu’s style - preferring to use realistic mise-en-scene and production design, while relying on camera angles, lighting and editing to achieve subjective representation.
The film built upon Nosferatu’s use of cinematic technique to convey subjectivity by incorporating the moving camera, it’s most influential technique on Hollywood.
Murnau, used the camera subjectively, providing the main character's POV - becoming the eyes of the character and conveying not only what they see, but what they think and feel about what they see.
| Caligari | Nosferatu | Last Laugh |
|---|---|---|
| Fantasy, terror narratives | Fantasy, terror narratives | Realistic narratives |
| Morbid psychological themes | Morbid psychological themes | Morbid psychological themes |
| Examine the emotional life of a character by visually revealing the subjective nature of the character in the objective world | Examine the emotional life of a character by visually revealing the subjective nature of the character in the objective world | Examine intellectually the social conditions in Germany by visually revealing the subjective nature of the characters in the world |
| Achieve it with Expressionist mise-en-scene | Achieve it with cinematic techniques (with realistic mise-en-scene) | Achieve it with cinematic techniques, especially a moving, pov camera (with realistic mise-en-scene) |
The Dawes Plan stabilized German currency, which had the effect of making movie production in Germany suddenly more expensive. It also limited German exports, so UFA now had fewer markets for its films.
UFA was in dire financial shape in late 1925, Paramount and MGM loaned UFA $4 million, the deal required UFA to reserve 75% of its movie screens for Hollywood.
The box office failure of later Expressionist films, especially Faust, hastened the end of the Expressionist cycle.
That said, today Faust is rightly regarded as a masterpiece.
In addition to the financial losses on late Expressionist films, and the departure for the US of many top talents with an interest in Expressionism, the cycle also ended because Expressionism was no longer seen as innovative or cutting-edge. The artistic movement which followed was called The New Objectivity.
New Objectivity represented a turn toward practical engagement with the everyday world, and an unsentimental view of life.
Street films are representative of The New Objectivity in their disillusionment and resignation to life’s miseries.
the lasting impact of expressionism