German Expressionism

Decent Essays
German Expressionism’s goal was to express feelings in the most extreme and straightforward fashion and used distortion to show an emotion rather then a facial appearance. Soviet Dialecticism used film “montage” to show collisions of different elements. The Dialecticism goal was to convey characteristics and sensations in the most direct fashion.

German Expressionism’s narrative structure was formed from legends and the actions of the supernatural, while Soviet Dialecticism’s narrative structure was based around social forces. The style of German Expressionism was known for its distortion, high contrast, and was entirely studio made to maintain control. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari a German Expressionism film from 1920 is a great example of

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    While movies are meant to convey a plot to the audience, the way in which they are filmed is very significant. During each period of time, movies focus on different aspects and chose different ways to convey ideas based on the popular culture. Often times, these stylistic choices are overlooked; however, when considering movies in the historical sense, it is vital that we consider the time period and how the movie was influenced by it. For the movie, Three Coins in the Fountain stylistic choices from clothing, scenery and cinematography all influence how the audience receives the message of a movie, and in this case, attempts to draw tourists into the city. During this time period, “In the 1950s the US government encouraged American vacation travel to western Europe as a means of bolstering European economies and fighting the cold war through consumer diplomacy.…

    • 1971 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Triumph of the Will, a documentary from 1935 set in Germany, revolutionized cinema when Leni Riefenstahl captured and exalted the fearless Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler and his infamous Nazi party. The film uses powerful imagery of Hitler himself and adoring crowds to emphasize his deity like leadership and the people’s love for him. In a time of insane rule, Riefenstahl’s picture was the propaganda for the Nazis that pushed its ideals through techniques that gave them false hope for the future of Germany in a ruthless and fascist regime. I will endeavor to investigate what techniques such as mise en scène and sound Riefenstahl uses to capitalize on the pathos of the viewer to follow the Nazi regime and their cause. Nazi Germany in 1935 was under the influence of the authoritarian ruler Adolf Hitler.…

    • 1885 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    German- speaking countries also developed great art about Modernisms, linking in a more subjective way the Modern to the German society`s concerns. The book mentions “expressionism and futurism are both evidently forms of response to the circumstances of urban modernity: negative and positive undoubtedly” ( Harrison, p.129, 1992) I think the previous statement is utterly true because I consider both movements correspond to a particular way of perceiving the modernization. As I said before, there were people who saw the modernity as something wrong and dehumanizing and in the other hand there were people who exalted the machines and dynamism as part of the positive change and modernism.…

    • 1935 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1936) are German propaganda films, directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Leni Riefenstahl was a German film director and propagandist for the Nazis. The films were created by Leni Riefenstahl in order to deliver the Nazi propaganda messages to the viewers and glorify Adolf Hitler as the savior of Germany. Also, the films were created because both films document the early days of the Nazi Party and its leader’s moments so that future generations could go back and see the power of the Nazi Party. This paper will explain how the director has used Nazi propaganda strategies in these films to deliver their propaganda messages.…

    • 1004 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Expressionism is defined as using a art form or drama as a means for depicting subjective emotions and responses. Forms of expressionism often connect to the artists own life which could be said about Orson Welles’s 1941 film Citizen Kane. It is widely thought that Citizen Kane is an unauthorized biography about the life of William Randolph Hearst, a well known newspaper tycoon from the time the film was made. The film is perhaps a dramatized account of a man who controls the people through controlling the media, giving him the feeling of being a God. This is heavily supported by the imagery in the film such as the huge campaign posters of Charles Foster Kane’s face looking out to the crowd of supporters.…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this research paper, I am especially aiming to clarify differences and contrasts between Siegfried Kracauer's and Thomas Elsaesser's analysis and understanding about a famous German Expressionist Film, the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is an innovative German silent film, produced by Robert Wiene in 1920. This film is the oldest, most influential, and highly valued works among a series of German expressionist movies. A story of this film is about serial murder in a fictitious village in the mountains in Germany. There are two men, a doctor, Caligari who has mental disorder, and his faithful servant, Cesare, who is sleepwalker patient.…

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Of some of the many early films, Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931), can be noted for its impact on film history as being one of the first films of its kind. This new genre of film inspired many more films to come in the Universal Hollywood film era. One distinguished area of Frankenstein is its strong ties to German Expressionism, which called for a new ways of cinema. This new wave of Cinema was noted for its “great burst of artistic activity” (TEXTBOOK). In Frankenstein the use of this creativity can be displayed through its specific elements of set design and recording, the monster and Dr. Frankenstein and finally its’ influence on future films.…

    • 1608 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Boris Groys. The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond. Translated by Charles Rougle. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992. 126 pp., $13.49 (paper).…

    • 1508 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The process of discovering the ideological foundations of power systems in the world is profoundly linked to how gaining such knowledge is a product of transformation in both individuals and groups. This is evident in Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and Becker’s tragicomic film Goodbye Lenin! (2003) where both protagonists and their environments undergo a process of political-self reflection. As Guevara encounters Latin American poverty he embraces communism and similarly, the protagonist in Becker’s film experiences political discovery as he preserves life in the GDR in order to keep the fall of the Berlin Wall as a secret to his ill mother.…

    • 1046 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The abstract expressionism movement emerge right after the World War II and it all began in the United States. There was finally a movement that would put the country on the spotlight of the world of art; Harold Rosenberg believed Americans had discovered something new, techniques that were not used in European art. He attempted to define this new art and to let everyone know that this movement was a developed version of art from americans. Correspondingly, Action painters like Jackson Pollock found their own americanized style and their own definition of abstract art.…

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    German Expressionism and Soviet Montage are two styles of filmmaking that emerged in the early 1920’s. German Expressionism can be seen as a reactionary art movement to the poverty stricken Germany in the wake of a crushing defeat in WWI. Its stylistic techniques as well as subject matter embodied the tone of the German masses in the post war era. Soviet Montage was also stylized by the current state of the Soviet Union that created it, it was popularly used as a form of propaganda and the political messages of the time are hard to miss.…

    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Battleship Potemkin, a Bolshevik propaganda film from 1925, impresses upon its audience the validity of the new Communist regime in Russia by presenting an idealized microcosm of the Bolshevik revolution on the battleship Prince Tavrichesky. Battleship Potemkin curates its audience’s reaction through the rise and fall of tension, which it does most prominently through the synergy of camera shot placement, camera shot order and music. Battleship Potemkin cycles through periods of calm, tension, and action. In this essay, calm is defined as a period in which on-screen subjects are not opposed to one another. Tension occurs when on-screen subjects are opposed to one another, but do not act on their opposition.…

    • 1455 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Four things from the beginning of the semester I enjoyed learning about and am still extremely interested in are Orson Welles, the Lumiere Brothers, Silent film and the German expressionist movement. I find Orson Welles interesting due to his life, his three career transitions, and how he had so much talent that was wasted because of his ego. Welles’s life is extremely incredible seeing he had three incredible careers. His start in the theater is interesting because he obviously was talented, but he still decided to move away from it into radio. This move is fascinating due to Welles being an actor who also used his body to express his parts.…

    • 830 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Classical Hollywood and neorealism are two important movements that have equally influenced the development of filmmaking. They both engage the audience into the film but their narrative conventions do differ from each other. The significance of the location and actors used differentiates the two approaches; as neorealism focuses on portraying reality by avoiding the glimmer of Hollywood stars and mise-en-scène. This allows neorealism to express the natural occurrences in life and the social issues of its time. CHC is known to use continuity editing to produce a naturalistic flow in its narrative to engage the audience in the film, but neorealism avoids these techniques because they simply illustrate an illusion of reality.…

    • 962 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pop Art versus Abtract Expressionism The Pop Art movement can be considered as a rejection or critique on it’s predecessor Abstract Expressionism. It differs both conceptually, and in its subject matter; and just like most art movements, it borrows and expands on all previous movements, creating its own path and style. While the the one evoked emotion simply with color and very little subject matter, the other veered away from the personal feeling but rather commented on the societal consumerism beliefs, excesssivity and eliminating all uniqueness of the individual. Pop Art and Abstract expressionism are opposites in many ways, this essay will differentiate their characteristics and explore further as to how they grew to contrast eachother.…

    • 1164 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays