German Expressionism and Its Roots :: essays papers

German Expressionism and Its Roots Personal freedom and alternative thinking -- these were the conditions in WeimarRepublic Germany during the heyday of the expressionist feces in film.Spanning the years 1909-1924, theirs was a time of revolution (in Russia andGermany), war (World War I), and reaction (the rise of National Socialism inGermany). Anxious roughly the disintegration of their culture, filmmakers such as F.W.Murnau, Robert Wiene, and Ernst Lubitsch used cinema to create new forms of visual representation, exploring the possibility of reversing power relations throughthe look. The cinematic Expressionist movement in Germany is generally consideredto be the classic period of German cinema many Expressionist works are includedin the canon of the originations greatest films. From Lubitschs masterpieces Passion(1919) and Deception (1920), through Wienes famous The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari (1919), to Murnaus brilliant The Last Laugh (1924) and Nosferatu(1922), there has seldom been a movement of such consistent inspiration andachievement. Expressionism in cinema, as in the other arts, attempts to reappropriate analienated universe by transforming it into a private, personal vision. With that inmind, Expressionist cinema tried to deepen the audiences interaction with the film,combining technology and imaginative filming techniques in order to intensify the error of reality. The Expressionists practically reinvented the look of film withinnovative and unusual editing rhythms, perspectivally distorted sets, exaggeratedgestures, and the famous television camera unchained -- a new technique that allowed thecamera to move within the scene, vastly increasing the accessibility of thecharacters subjective point of view. The Expressionists developed new habits ofseeing,