德国电影 German expressionism(德国表现主义)

Sonja, Christian Schad (1928)
Portrait of Egon Erwin Kisch, Christian Schad (1928)
Nollendorfplatz de nuit and Railway Station Nollendorfplatz at Night, (1925)
• The Expressionist predilection for extreme states takes on a morbid bent: individual insanity and social disorder are its favored themes. This can also be tied to the growing role played by Freudian psychoanalysis in the artistic and intellectual life of Europe.
德国电影germanexpressionism德国表现主义
German 1171 Session 1
Expressionism
• A movement and sensibility in the fields of painting, literature, music and architecture that emerges in Central Europe in the first decade of the 20th century.
• Expressionism coalesces into a specific “German Expressionism” around 1910 when the term is used during a painting exhibition in Berlin. Around the same time, literary artists, particularly poets, begin to identify themselves as German Expressionist; the movement’s most prominent publication is the journal title Der Sturm (The Storm), which ran weekly from 1910-1914 and monthly to 1924.
• Expressionism defies easy characterization as it is a term encompassing a wide range of artistic visions. One commentator has stated, “The term has been exhausted of all meaning by the strife of the historians and idealogues. Once the phenomena of the movement have been examined more closely it is no longer possible to assume any unity of style.” (Paul Raabe)
The Decline of Expressionism
• The movement was pessimistic about the future of society in its present state, but optimistic about the new world that would emerge from its collapse. Many of its works are concerned with images of the world’s end:
Portrait of Alexander Sakharoff by Aleksej von Jawlensky (1909)
Nollendorfplatz, Max Beckmann (1911)
Nollendorfplatz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1912)
The Nature(s) of Expressionism
• However, it is at this very time that Expressionist cinema is at its peak.
Self-Portrait with Champagne Glass, Max Beckmann (1919)
Marcelle, Christian Schad (1926)
• “By the time that Expressionism was making its presence felt in the cinema it was already a waning influence in other spheres of creativity. A combination of war weariness and cynicism over the future of Germany, which had brought about the rejection of Expressionism elsewhere, ironically seemed to help the situation with respect of the cinema”
That being said… we can work with certain general notions as guidelines: • A tendency toward vividness, color, vitality, and even chaos in its designs. • Extreme stylization and symbolism. • Contrast of light and dark imagery that parallels and represents the conflict
– “The leaning toward violent contrast – which in Expressionist literature can be seen in the use of staccato sentences – and inborn German liking for chiaroscuro and shadow, obviously found an ideal artistic outlet in the cinema. Visions nourished by moods of vague and troubled yearning could have found no more apt mode of expression, at once concrete and unreal. – Lotte Eisner, The Haunted Screen
of rational and irrational forces. • The projection of internal states onto the external world. The “reality” of
(often extreme) psychological conditions overwhelms the depiction of an objective world. The Expressionist expresses a subjective point-of-view. • A highly critical view of bourgeois society, which is seen as erasing individuality through industrialization, standardization and mass culture.
• From bourgeois’ pointed heads their bowlers flew, the whole atmosphere´s like full of cry. Tile layers fall from roofs and break in two, and on the coast, one reads, the water´s high. The storm is here, the seven seas do wildly hop onto the land to bust thick dams. The folk have cold, so many noses need a mop. From viaducts fall down the trams. - “End of the World” by Jakob von Hoddis (1911)
• Be careful what you wish for: The grim reality of World War I (1914-1918) causes most Expressionists – those who survived – to rethink their positions and develop new artistic positions that discard the affinity for extreme subjectivism for a more engaged and pragmatic approach: after Expressionism comes a “New Objectivity” in the 1920s.
The Scream by Edvard Munch (1893)
Fighting Forms, Frnism was atmosphere, movement, vitality”
-Paul Raabe
Painting with Cattle, Franz Marc (1913)
• German Expressionist film appears slightly later: Paul Wegener’s horror film The Student of Prague (1913) may be considered its earliest example. The 1920s bring about the heyday of German Expressionist cinema.
– Ian Roberts
German Expressionist Cinema and its Artistic and Literary Precedents
• The cinema adapts many of the techniques and sensibilities of poetry and painting to a new medium: as a vehicle for capturing the play of light, the cinema is ideally suited to give new form to the world of shadows already developed in the work of its forebears: