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Lesson 2: German Expressionism & Dadaism

Briefly elaborate what this expressionist form consists of and how it reflects the movement as a whole.

Expressionist form was developed in the 20th century between 1900 and 1920s. The development of this form erupted at a period when artists from Europe especially Germany began to leave impressionism. Artists wanted their work to project bold, dramatic and urgent statement during this era. To achieve this, the artists began using bolder and brighter color palettes, painting style that was energetic and minimized by academic rendering approach. The expressionist form of art, from the traditional academic approach to the more outstanding style that was extremely powerful. The German Expressionism is a cultural movement that is not easily defined due to its complexity. Expressionism from German used different styles and methods of creation, therefore it is described by the artists’ mindset and the period of creation. The writers, artists and thinkers of Expressionists lived before the World War II and they were of age during the ruling of Wilhelm II. They came up with this form of art as a way of pretesting against the Germany’s bourgeois culture (Donahue, 2014).

The German Expressionist movement was more of a political, social and cultural living. They expressed themselves through telling stories and creating art works. It was a movement that aimed more at facing challenges that existed in the time and bringing change and solutions to the problems. Most of these Expressionists held a belief that art had power to cause change in society. Their main focus was on individuals and their roles in the story being told. The main purpose of the expressionist movement was to cause man from his masters through reminding him of his humanity that was indisputable. The movement extended further into the cause of human knowledge and its supporters participated in protest and realized economics, politics, publishing, film, social structure, literature, painting and architecture change.

Relate these general characteristics of Expressionism to the formal characteristics of Wiene's film and to the film's socio-political "message."

“The Cabinet Caligari” by Robert Wiene is one of the most weird and frightening horror movies. Wiene’s film began the German Expressionism movement during the introduction of German cinema era. The German Expressionism was formed by the isolation of the country during the World War I. The movie involved strange set designs with passionately unrealistic and geometrically ridiculous sets. Wiene’s film generally puts the viewers under a creepy and eerie spell. The movie has a poetic terrifying power that is very troubling and hypnotic. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari film also has a peculiar German expressionistic form (Matthew, 2015).

In the film, there is a strange world where certain forms of characters inhabit. The world has landscapes that are filled with sharp hostile features and environments with bizarre angels, abstract shapes, distorted sets and twisted shadows. The structure designs of building in the movie are off kilter and the floors and walls of the building are painted with shadows and geometrically balanced light. The visual provided for in the film is a way for the audience to gain intrinsic emotional realism rather than practicality. The audience gets a feeling that the space collapses around him, a feeling that makes him gasp with fear. The actors have makes-ups that are very exaggerated, unnatural and jerky to blend in with theoretical and stylistic environment. The strange and vague style in German Expressionism are unrealistic just like the main character’s delusion whose narrative contrasts the movie style since it revolves around murder, madness and psychology.

Wiene’s film is considered as one of the first scariest films in the cinema industry. The zombie like distinctiveness of Cesare evidently had a great influence in the global monster films of the 1930's. Further, Wiene’s film was one of the original major films to institute a twist ending, something that was never seen before in films and pretty shocking for that era. The most fascinating and disturbing feature of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is its visionary theories that the film predicted the imminent rise of Nazism in the Germany later years, whereby German Expressionism was applied, portraying a scary world of distort, delusions, killings and madness. A deep analysis of the movie, one would notice that Caligari essentially symbolized Hitler, while the German people symbolized the sleep-walkers spellbound under wicked spell of Caligari. Generally, this fill expresses expressionism in a very strong way especially through the powerful way that the narrator tells his story. The movie is also able to stir emotions from their viewers making them view the world differently hence challenging them to change it for the better. Through a symbolic manner, the viewers of the movie are shown the horrors and disability that exist in the world they are living in (Kirchner, 2014).