German Expressionism

THE BIRTH OF THE HORROR GENRE

German expressionism is an art movement that bridged the time between Wilhelm II’s reign and the beginning of World War II. Before being applied to film,  its activities reached "into more areas of human intellectual endeavour, its adherents participating in agitation for and implementation of change in politics, economics, social structures, publishing, music, film, theatre, architecture, painting and literature (Boorman, 1986. P.3)”. 

With German expressionism influence,  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, (Wiene,1920), a horror masterpiece in the style and tone, left the German public both horrified and enthralled by creating  a terrifying world and an external physicalisation of a nightmare. There are three factors that form the distinctive identity of  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Set Design, Actors and Camera Movements, and Exaggerated Performance.

Firstly, Director Wiene creates an atmosphere of horror from unnatural feeling heavy set design. Instead of creating shadows with light, Wiene decided to have shadows painted sprawl out across the set and completed covered the characters. Together with artificial shadow, the jagged buildings can express the anxious by its look and left the audience with the feeling that the town could collapse in on itself at any moment. The horror hidden in the familiar objects above are clearly the elements of Freud’s ‘Uncanny’. Jentsch (1919) explained that "the “uncanny” is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar."

Secondly, playing with the movement of the actors and the camera was another way that allows Wiene to create a world filled with fears and horror.  A forward movement of the actors towards the camera technique was commonly used. “The hideous form of the vampire approaches with exasperating slowness, moving from the extreme depth of one shot towards another in which he suddenly becomes enormous” ( Eisner, 1974). 

Finally, The actor's movements are over exaggerated with an extremely slow pace, adding the horror to this nightmare world. In other words, characters present themselves as something they are not to leave the audience with the feeling that all is not right in this world.  It is truly a world of paranoia and fear that Wiene presents to us.

There are other films that influenced by German expressionism. For example, F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) is another prime example of expressionism at work in cinema. The most iconic scene in Nosferatu is a pure exercise in expressionistic art and an excellent example of the use of shadow in expressionism films.

Taking into account all the unique identities of German expressionism influenced films, I personally believe that German expressionism undoubtedly deserves its place as part of the birth of the horror film genre. Wells (2001) also confirmed that German expressionism "represents a style and a vision and the beginnings of a genre”.