German Expressionism

Fear is painted on the set: distorted streets, shadows that lie, and the mind shown from the inside.

When: 1919–1926
Where: Germany
Films: 5 · 4 guided
Named by: 21 guides

Where it sits

The first filmsGerman ExpressionismFilm noir · Poetic Realism

Context

What was happening

Germany in 1919: the war lost, the empire gone, a new republic unsteady and money losing its value. A generation of painters, playwrights and poets had already answered this kind of anxiety with distortion, harsh colour and angular forms, showing inner feeling rather than the visible world.

German studios could build whole worlds indoors, with skilled designers, painters and carpenters, and control every line and every shadow. In 1920 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari translated the painters' look to film, and the set itself became the character's state of mind. A cinema of built nightmares followed.

The signature

What you see on screen

1Painted setsLeaning streets, angled windows, walls that look drawn rather than built.
2Shadows that lieDark shapes cast by nothing, or stretched until they threaten.
3The mind insideThe world bends to match the fear or madness of the person seeing it.
4Stylised actingGesture and posture pushed past realism until they become a state of mind.

The people

Who made it

RWRobert WieneDirector of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the film that fixed the painted, distorted look.
FWF. W. MurnauThe movement's great stylist. Nosferatu, The Last Laugh, and later Sunrise in Hollywood.
FLFritz LangBuilt the movement's largest worlds. Metropolis, and later M.
PLPaul LeniBegan as a designer, which says much about a cinema built on sets.

The films

Defining films, in order

Its constellation

Where it came from, what it led to

Led to

Film noir Poetic Realism

Open the galaxy of movements

Legacy

Where you still see it

Universal's horror cycle, from Frankenstein on, took its crooked sets and deep shadow. The émigrés, among them Lang, Siodmak, Wilder and Ulmer, carried the low key and the doomed hero into film noir. Carné's studio streets and fog in poetic realism owe their fatal atmosphere to these sets. Citizen Kane and The Night of the Hunter still use tilted shadows to show a mind.

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