German Expressionism and Its Roots :: essays papers

German Expressionism and Its Roots Personal freedom and alternative cerebration -- these were the conditions in WeimarRepublic Germany during the heyday of the Expressionist movement in film.Spanning the years 1909-1924, theirs was a time of revolution (in Russia andGermany), war (World War I), and reaction (the rise of case Socialism inGermany). Anxious about the disintegration of their culture, filmmakers such as F.W.Murnau, Robert Wiene, and Ernst Lubitsch used cinema to create untried forms of visual representation, exploring the possibility of reversing power relations throughthe look. The cinematic Expressionist movement in Germany is generally consideredto be the classic period of German cinema many Expressionist works ar includedin the canon of the worlds greatest films. From Lubitschs masterpieces Passion(1919) and Deception (1920), through Wienes famous The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari (1919), to Murnaus pictorial The Last Laugh (1924) and Nosferatu(1922), there has r arely been a movement of such consistent inspiration andachievement. Expressionism in cinema, as in the other arts, attempts to reappropriate analienated mankind by transforming it into a private, personal vision. With that inmind, Expressionist cinema tried to deepen the audiences interaction with the film,combining technology and imaginative record techniques in order to intensify theillusion of reality. The Expressionists practically reinvented the look of film withinnovative and unusual editing rhythms, perspectivally distorted sets, exaggeratedgestures, and the famous camera unchained -- a new technique that allowed thecamera to move within the scene, vastly increasing the accessibility of thecharacters subjective point of view. The Expressionists developed new habits ofseeing,