German expressionism

Das Cabinett des Dr Caligari - Totally awesome film!

Well, the film looks like an early expressionism painting, and analyzing it in my essay has been really interesting. I could never have realized that so much was hidden in it. I will try and compare the films with the Romantic movement.

First of all, I would never have guessed how alike it is to the Romanticism books and literature written in the early 1800's such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula. If we compare Cesare with the monster in Frankenstein, you can find similarities in how he has his master, and how he is alienated from the rest of the world, but the difference is in how Cesare does not break free from his master the way the creature does in Frankenstein.

Furthermore, you can see how the landscape is similar as the Germans are building the Third Reich and how the economy is poor. It becomes a question about class in the end.

There is also many elements of fantasy and horror (as we can find many similarities between German expressionism film and modern horror films) similar to the ones in the books written in the beginning of the 1800's. This unreal worlds are in the expressionism film most clear in the backgrounds and the acting. We see worlds that do not look like our own, there are few shadows that makes the world "real" and the acting is often grotesque.

As many of the expressionism films are similar to the literature written during the Romantic movement, there is no surprise that the first vampire film based on Bram Stoker's Dracula also originated from this time in the shape of Warnau's Nosferatu.

Well, this is about as much as I will go into the subject for this time, if I had more time I would have made this post longer, but the essay and a question on the American Studio system are calling so I better get started with it.