expressionism and art and design
The German expressionist cinema of the 1920s represented a major breakthrough for cinema as an artistic medium - telling stories in a visual and narrative style unlike what had been seen previously. Whilst American cinema pioneers were refining techniques such as close-ups and highly detailed and realistic set construction on films such as D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916)), German directors in the period after World War, under the influence of painters such as Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, developed a deliberately non-realistic form of cinema, where emotion and atmosphere triumphed over realism.
An important film was Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919). One of the film's designers, Hermann Warm described the process of working on the film in The Haunted Screen "We spent a whole day and part of the night reading through this very curious script. We realised that a subject like this needed something out of the ordinary in the way of sets. Reimann, whose painting in those days had Expressionist tendencies, suggested doing the sets Expressionistically. We immediately set to work roughing up designs in that style."
The influence of Expressionist painting and drama on The Cabinet of Dr Caligari can be seen in the film's use of extreme canted camera angles, exaggerated gestures by the actors and irregular distorted shapes. The film shows how cinema relatively early in its life absorbed the influence of visual art to develop a new artistic approach to film story telling. As cinema developed through the twentieth century it began itself to influence other art forms - an obvious example of this is in the development of comics.
Pure expressionist cinema didn't last for long.
the distorted designs of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
get set
Looking at the history of production design is a great way to get students engaged with some of the many art and design elements of film.
The BFI's Creative Archive has a host of early, out of copyright films, which can be downloaded and repurposed, which show how early cinema moved in its early days from being a scientific curiosity which was concerned with documenting life as lived, such as Panorama of Ealing from a Moving Tram (1901), to early developments of film storytelling which used staging conventions and techniques familiar from the world of theatre, such as Mary Jane's Mishap (1903), through to films which began to develop a distinctive look and technique specific to to cinema, with multiple locations, such as Daisy Doodad's Dial (1914), or artistic special effects and design, such as Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902). Such early films are sometimes classed as primitive films.
possible activities
It can be a fun creative exercise to ask pupils to storyboard, or make a very short film using primitivist film techniques; such as exaggerated body language, single location, intertitles, long shots. Simple computer editing software such as Imovie or MovieMaker can give that "1900s look". This amusing film shows how it can be used in science.
As homework research ask students to find recent examples of media which has been influenced by expressionism. These could be film posters, TV and movie stills, web design, book covers, CD covers, music videos...
Ask students to prepare presentations comparing short extracts from expressionist films with expressionist paintings.
Key German Expressionist Films
Golem (Paul Wegner, 1915)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)
Raskolnikov (Robert Wiene, 1923)
Expressionism as an art form "died out" quickly in he second half of the 1920s. However, the influence of German Expressionist film has been a considerable influence on later cinema - perhaps most notably in the work of Tim Burton. This can be seen in the Expressionist cityscapes (with Oscar-winning designs by Anton Furst of Batman (1989), as well as Edward Scissorhands (1990) and The Nightmare Before Christmas (1994).