...After its defeat in the First World War, Germany was left in a dismal state; there was a massive shortage of resources and thousands of German people had died. Many artists, including the creators of the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, were forever changed after witnessing the horrors that war had caused. The effects of the war caused them to turn inward and seek ways to try and verbalize their emotional states. German citizens wanted a retreat from their bleak reality. This need to express their emotions led German artist to create a movement of expression that is known as German Expressionism. German Expressionism manifested the German people’s state of mind in cinema through the use of distorted sets, dark, compelling stories, and exaggerated performances. Expressionism was an artistic way to visually represent the inward anxieties felt by the German society after the war. One way this was achieved in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was through director, Robert Wiene’s use of set designs. The sets were jagged, angled, and gave the viewer feelings of being disoriented and unbalanced. These sets represent the uneasiness people felt about the future of their society....
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...Robert Wiene’s silent film, “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari”, is an early cinematic gem that uses expressionist form in order to convey social and political messages to viewers. This film is not only a representation of the artistic styles within Germany at the time, but also an insight on the opinions of the German people during the early Weimar Republic. Sociologists, such as Siegfried Kracauer, have praised this film for its artistic form and political message. The expressionist stylings of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari are both immediate and abundant throughout the film. Gothic themes enter the storyline within the first scene when a man is observing the movements of the spirit of his fiancee. Title cards with disorderly designs narrate much...
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...“There are significant stylistic variations within international film styles.” How far have you found this to be true in the films you have studied for this topic? There are significant stylistic variations within the German Expressionist films, ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’, ‘Nosferatu’ and ‘Metropolis’. German Expressionism is the term used to describe the creative arts and film movements that were happening post war, in the early 1920’s. They are associated with themes of death, depression, darkness, insanity and distortion, which depict the state of the country and its civilians following the devastation of the war. German Expressionist films are significant to the history of the film industry as they have been filmed using distinctive methods and style techniques, which have influenced modern day film makers such as Tim Burton. One of the most significant stylistic variations that can be found within German Expressionist films is the considerable use of mise-en-scene. ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’, directed by Robert Wiene, was filmed against painted sets and backdrops. Due to the lack of funding in the film industry at the time, some films were shot entirely on backdrops like the ones seen in this film. The importance of this is that the sharp angles and distorted buildings look highly unrealistic, which reflects upon the madness and insanity of the main character Francis. As he is the narrator of the film, we are being told and shown the story through his mind, therefore...
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...【UNDERSTANDING MOVIES】Mise en Scene in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 2:33PM / Standard Entry The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the first and major examples of the German Expressionism film movement, which features a dark and twisted style of film making. The plots and stories of the Expressionist movement films often deal with madness, insanity, betrayal, and other sinister topics. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is known for its particular and unusual settings. All the scenes are distorted and the objects in them changed in odd ways. For example, a normal window has an abnormal shape. Lines and other shapes are not regular even though the viewer can still understand what they are. Moreover, the lighting including the shadowing is drawn on the background screen directly, which makes the picture look unnatural. The subtitles and its background are also odd and bent. All of these techniques were used to make people recognize everyday objects but understand that it is part of the characters’ imaginations (or the director’s imagination). The director is leading people into his imagination, buried in the mazy town, fragmented frame, the twisted mirror, sloping walls, lopsided doors, the rough road, exaggerated tree branches, etc. One interesting note is the scenes where Alan, who seems the most “normal” of all the characters, is introduced. He is in a room with a chair that looks normal—it has straight lines and is the right size. But he looks out...
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...ART WORLD Art House: An Introduction to German Expressionist Films Alissa Darsa, Thursday, December 26, 2013 Robert Wiene, Stills for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (three works) (1919). Gelatin silver print, sold at Christie's New York. Welcome to the first article in Art House, a series detailing the evolution of art house films, and their impact on the relationship between art and cinema. The term art house refers to films that are artistic or experimental in nature, and are generally not part of the commercial mainstream. It is interesting to note that unlike many other forms of avant-garde, filmic avant-garde does not typically generate the profits earned by its musical, visual, and literary counterparts. Most artists who have produced avant-garde films have had to rely on other artistic media as a source of income, including Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987).1 However, there are several films that have crossed over into the realm of mainstream cinema, and have been both financially successful as well as stylistically influential. This article focuses on German Expressionism, one of the earliest artistic genres to influence filmmaking, and one that arguably paved the way for many other avant-garde styles and techniques. Walter Reimann & Hermann Warm, Le docteur à la foire (from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) (1919). Sold at Binoche Renaud-Giquello & Associés. German Expressionism is an artistic genre that originated in Europe in the 1920s, and is broadly defined...
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...Modernism’s Relation to Early Film In The Cabinet of Caligari women are portrayed in a way that matches up with Modernism concepts. Dr. Olsen’s daughter is kidnapped and the men quickly hurry to rescue her. This scene shows how Dr. Caligari makes no attempts to resist savagery, in film men often must come to the rescue of women, and the savagery exemplifies why there are boundaries and standards in the world. Dr. Olson’s daughter, Jane, puts herself on Dr. Caligari’s radar when she comes looking for her father. Caligari is using a sleepwalking man, Cesare, to commit murders in the town. Jane goes searching for her father, for no reason other than her curiosity and anxiety, and gets herself in trouble for it. In Modernism, searching for answers can be dangerous as one can see glimpses into the savage world, as Jane does with Caligari and Cesare. As we’ve seen over and over in this course, such as in Heart of Darkness, the savage world is truly too much for a civilized person to handle and leads to many problems. In this case, even though she wasn’t directly searching for knowledge on savagery, Jane’s inquiry helps get her kidnapped. Jane is kidnapped from her sleep. In Modernism sleep is often associated with being g able to see the truth as well as viewing one’s hopes, fears, and desires. While it’s impossible to know what Jane was dreaming about she is quickly awakened into a quick nightmare. However, this “nightmare” helps the truth about Caligari soon become known. Cesare chooses...
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...German Expressionism ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ is a film from the 1920’s and was the most influential and significant film that belongs to the German expressionism film movement. German Expressionism, as it name shows, highlights the expressions of the internal opinions, beliefs, and feelings via the use of artistic, stylistic materials and fundamentals. It had a main goal to advance life, especially, change. Therefore, it may be considered an evolution revealing German civilization through these times of alteration or change. Due to the loss of the German’s in WWI and its consequences, the movement’s plot was about madness, insanity, and poverty. It’s not just a story telling but it had communal, civilizing, and political features. Expressionist first film was ‘The Student of Prague’ (1913), then comes the first vampire movie in 1916 ‘ Nache des Gravens’ (Night of Horror), ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ in 1920, and ‘The Golen’ (how we came into the world)… All these films have their special style, the style that specialize the German Expressionism movement. It’s characterized by relying heavily on the story and design, mise-en-scene, with the weird ambiance and work of art but lightly on editing. According to the shooting, the camera moves slightly with unpredictable camera’s position. As for the illumination, we see harsh distinction of light and shadows for diverse effects, known for Chiaroscuro lightning, symbolizing the occurrence of gloomy phases in human beings...
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...In the 1920 film, The Cabinet of Caligri, Cesare symbolizes how the common folk can be lead to commit atrocities by a brutal government (Doctor Caligri). The people watching the film are represented by Francis, whose own sanity is shown to be questionable towards the end. This essay will conduct a visual analysis of The Cabinet of Caligri and focus on the characters Cesare, Doctor Caligri and Francis to establish how they represent different parts of society. The story takes place with Francis telling an older man about how his life was altered. He explains that he lived in Holstenwall, and everything begins to go shadowy. Francis tells the story about a string of murders that happen when a local fair comes to town and Doctor Caligri obtains...
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...Throughout the course of this semester, we viewed many films that had different styles and themes. Though each film had different elements that stood out, two films as a whole have stayed with me. Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger's The Red Shoes. Prior to taking this course, I will admit that I had the impression that silent films were cheesy. But Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is definitely not a cheesy film. The film is told as a flashback in Francis's perspective regarding a series of events that happened prior to the introduction of the film. Throughout the film, the perspective of the set is presented as unbalanced and disorientated which proved to be an interesting element...
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...World War I. As citizens were experiencing an array of emotions, they turned to different forms of artistic expression to help cope with their anxieties and worries. Out of this arose the German Expressionist movement and the Surrealist movement, both deriving out of the European areas of the world. Through this, filmakers such as the German Robery Wiene and the Spanish Luis Bunel and Salvador Dali created their respective films The Cabinet Of Dr. Calagari and Un Chien Andalou. Simultaneously, Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician was developing a theory of psychoanalysis that focused how the human unconscious can manifest itself...
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...the academic realm, the term mise-en-scène is always invoked when the overall look and feel of a movie is under discussion. Students taking Film Analysis should be quite familiar with the term. Even though many professionals are involved in its creation, the director is the one that oversees the entire mise-en-scène and all of its elements. Not just that, but during the early stages of pre-production, the director or his AD sits down with set designers, prop masters, location managers, costume designers, and scenic artists to determine the look and feel intended. In some instances, the mise-en- scène is used to evoke lasting feelings throughout the movie and not just for selected scenes. In the German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), distorted shapes and claustrophobic scenery is implemented to disturb the audience and enhance the horror. Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967) has been praised by its amazing, exciting, and multi-layered visual...
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...In a number of chapters Gay discusses Walter Gropius and the significance of the Bauhaus. Chapter three sketches the innovations and influence of poets and novelists, such as Stefan George, Rainer Rilke, and Thomas Mann. Gay adeptly reveals the importance of cinema and its relation to artists; hence, Gay reveals the impact that the 1920 film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and the three expressionist painters—Warm, Rohrig, and Reimann-- who designed the sets, had in the Republic and particularly in Berlin. In chapter six, Gay demonstrates the flourishing of modernist composers, such as Alban Berg and Paul Hindemith, and those conductors with whom they collaborated, such as Erich Kleiber and Wilhelm Furtwanger, In a nutshell, Gay elaborates the following reasons that why Weimar failed: catastrophic economic difficulties imposed by both Versailles, mandated reparations and the Great Depression, a lack of conviction on the part of the German intellectual elite, an electorate fractured into too many places from right to...
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...early nineteen hundreds. The movement is said to have started around “1908 as a style of painting and the theatre”. The movement spread across Europe but Germany was considered the epicenter of Expressionism, where it was said to be more intense than any other nation in Europe. The Expressionist style was essentially a rejection of realism. In painting, artists would not use the clever shading techniques, for example, to make the subject look real, like painters at the time had been doing for so long. They might use brighter or darker colors and make people look distorted and often creepy and grotesque. “In late February 1920, a film premiered in Berlin that was instantly recognized as something new in cinema: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”. Although Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene, was considered the first Expressionist film and would spark a massive movement in the film industry, it did not come as much of a shock to a lot of film critics since the movement was already so prevalent in other art forms. Nonetheless, many more film makers followed suit in making movies that featured the Expressionist style. One such movie was Nosferatu. Made in 1922 and directed by F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu was for all intents and purposes a horror film. The protagonist, Hutter, who works for a real estate company, is sent to the mysterious estate of a potentially huge client, who turns out to be Nosferatu, a hideous and grotesque monster of a person. During his stay at Nosferatu’s castle...
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...Caligari) is a silent film that transends that of whitch we know , and tries as much as it can to reach out and blow the mind of the audience. Using every tool at their disposal, for the time, to re imagion the idea of a set and look apon it as more then a setting to thrust the viewer hensforth into a state of pure inebration, suficating them with overwelming imersion into the owrld itself. However intead of the imersion this set took it to a compleatly other level with the set itself becomeing almost an indapendent work of art following the abstract style of many famis painters of the past. In its intierety it becomes something more than a set it almost makes the stage a canvis of witch you see the painting of life spring into action, then to...
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...TRACES OF MODERNISM IN ART The ancient parallel between literature and visual arts –i.e. painting, sculpture and architecture becomes newly relevant in the twentieth century. Painters were the first to explore the revolutionary possibilities of modernism, so that painting became the leading art form. Modernism refers to the style and ideology of art produced between the 1860s and the 1970s. As traditional art forms had become outdated due to industrialization, modernism emerged in Western Europe out of a need to reject tradition and embrace the political, social and economic change of the industrial age. Modernism was embodied by a new generation of artists whose work was characterized by a variety of styles and subject choices that flew in the face of accepted convention. While, generally speaking, it challenged a number of aesthetic principles, modernism ultimately gave rise to a variety of movements and styles. The great progenitor of modernist revolt was the impressionist movement in the second half of the nineteenth century in France. Impressionist painters made colorful style of painting, characterized as impressionism. Impressionism attaches great importance to our perception of contrasts and light, something that is accurately expressed through the seasons. Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral in full sunlight was a famous painting, other than this Pierre Auguste Renoi, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec are among the most important impressionist painters...
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