Fritz Lang

Jo Mielziner was the great Broadway Scenic designer who designed sets for hundreds of important plays and musicals and whose remarkable career spanned from 1927 to 1989. His design has earned him an array of awards. With his work, he has permanently affected the art of stage design and influenced many other designers. Jo Mielziner was a prominent designer who revolutionized the art of technical theatre. Jo Mielziner spent his childhood in France but moved to the States in 1909. Mielziner father…

produce these kinds of films; surrealistic, oppressive and oftentimes terrifying. Of those films, the ones that cemented German expressionism were The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920), Nosferatu (F.W Murnaw, 1922) and later Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). These films brought a whole new…

Throughout history, the public has been entertained by stories written and performed by artists visually. The creation of the moving picture gave an outlet to visual art performers to reach brand new audiences of enormous sizes. The cultural and artistic differences that influenced art prior to the film industry also made an imprint on films from around the Western world. Because of the emphasis on capitalism in America and England, the films of English speaking directors tended to be aimed at…

by cynical fatalism. Orwell’s pensive approach to human potential has been shaped by his own contextual issues, and questions our ability to maintain functioning society without a descent into the kind of oligarchy that he represents. Conversely, Fritz Lang’s iconic 1927 sci-fi film Metropolis adopts an approach marked by the presence of idealism despite a defeated populace. In this way, Metropolis does not conform to a stencil of a typical dystopia that is often applied to both texts. In…

During the two world wars, there was a popular art design movement between the 1920’s to 1930’s. It was a combination of different artist styles; neoclassical, constructivism, cubism, modernism, art nouveau, and futurism. These styles affected all types of art such as architecture, interior, design, sculpture, furniture, industrial design and other mediums like clothing, jewelry, graphic arts, paintings, and films. This movement was one of the reason why the twenties were known for “a world…

As the 69th Cannes Film Festival progresses, an attempt at revisiting the only Indian film to have won Grand Prix there In a year when no film from India has made it to the competition section at Cannes, it is interesting to note that the only time an Indian entry won the top honours there was a year before the country was born. Almost 70 years back, in 1946, Neecha Nagar by Chetan Anand shared the Grand Prix with 10 other films. Among the very first films to follow the approach of social…

History The city of Berlin dates back to the year 1237 A.D. where it was actually composed of two medieval cities, Antberlin and Cölln. Cölln was built on the isle of Fischerinsel and separated from Antberlin by the river Spree. Over time, the two cities grew together economically and socially. In 1307, the cities developed an alliance, uniting completely with the exception of internal policies. The area that would become Berlin lay in the Holy Roman principality of the Margraviate of…

Prior to the 20’s, film had slowly expanded from an experimental technology to a widespread form of entertainment. Thomas Edison’s assistant William K.L. Dickson was the inventor of a motorized camera that could record motion. Once he tested it and finalized it in 1892, Edison began setting up parlors where interested viewers could pay to watch 20-30 second videos, mostly of dancing groups and battle scenes. Inspired by this, the European film industry began with Auguste and Louis Lumiere. The…

When considering culture in the 20th century, film and literature are two of the most important components. Both mediums create huge responses from their audiences, as these forms of art serve to let the audience experience something viscerally, all the while letting them connect these emotions to specific events occurring around them. Both world wars and the Cold War greatly impacted film and literature in Europe, ultimately leading to different ways to connect and understand art. At the…

young French cinema indirectly reproached Hollywood’s long-established narratives and restricted storyline subterfuges” (Lanzoni, 206), the French New Wave directors also had a longstanding appreciation for directorial greats like Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles. Each film was an exercise in honouring great filmmakers, and any other hero of the director: writers, great thinkers and even Hollywood actors, through countless references in style, mise-en-scene or even dialogue. Roy…