Preview

Comparative Essay: Edward Scissor Hands and Metropolis on German Expressionism

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1733 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Comparative Essay: Edward Scissor Hands and Metropolis on German Expressionism
Germal expressionist films matched the visuals in terms of darkness and disillusionment. Often somre in mood and featuring characters from a corrupt world, the films dramatic effects produced motifs of claustrophobia and paranoia. Expressioism is the movement in the fine arts that emphasized the expression of one’s inner self and their angst that soley beng realistic and fanboying about the world and lie.

Features typical of the expressionist style
Special features, narrative elements, style, codes and conventions, symbolism, lighting, character type.
Deeper meaning cultural context, political and social
Values and attitues and ideologies

Edward Scissorhands is one of the movies that is influenced by German Expressionism.

Burton uses his artistic reputation to adapt the structure and conventions of the traditional fairyatale to a contemporary American, suburban setting. Burton sets his story in a contemporary American suburb. He has given each generation represented in Edward Scissorhands its own system of symbolic shorthand representing the different ears they grew up in, different times associated with different tasted, each expressing a particular aestheic. The parents generation is characterized by familiar 50’s and 60’s icons; the confromist, consumer-led boom of those years represented by lava lamps, functional interiors and social rituals like the barbecue. The surrealist elements of expressionism can be seen in the setting. All the houses in the town are built in the same consistent shapes, arranged nearly along the entire road with their pastel palletes. The castle is dark, curved. There are also some trees with no leaves. All these unnatural realities is one of the styles of German Expressionism.

German Expressionism was an artistic movement that preceded World War 1 in Germany, and culminated in the 1920’s with Expressionist cinema. It was an extremely influential genre that showed cinema could be an art form, not just a source of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Burton uses contrasting colors in Edward Scissorhands in order to show how dissimilar Edward is. In Edward Scissorhands, all the houses, cars, and people’s clothing in the neighborhood are bright pastel colors that juxtaposed Edward’s black and white appearance already displaying how Edward does not fit in with the neighborhood.…

    • 406 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tim Burton

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages

    “One person’s craziness is another person’s reality,” Tim Burton says. In addition, that is shown in his movies Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Edward Scissorhands, as a gothic romance is portrayed. Tim Burton’s films show his unique and creative style in his stories, settings, and especially his characters. Film director Tim Burton utilizes close ups, low key lighting, and creepy non diegetic music in order to create a gloomy, and gothic effect revealing that society rejects those that appear to be different.…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Belonging Essay

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Likewise, Tim Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands” displays a similar sort of alienation towards on character, but for differing reasons. Edward’s characteristics are immediately juxtaposed with that of the vibrant and motley neighbourhood. Before Edward is even introduced into the film, his exile towards fellowship has already been foreshadowed. This is portrayed when the character, Peg, gazes into her rear view mirror to reveal Edward’s dark, immoral house in comparison with the motley neighbourhood.…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Otto Dix Research Paper

    • 156 Words
    • 1 Page

    The road to Fauvism, Expressionism and the New Objectivity was a modernism idea of self and social identity in artistic expression. It contained expression…

    • 156 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    After World War I, an artistic movement began in Germany called the Weimar Cinema, or later called German Expressionism. The movement is most often credited with introducing a new style of film in which dark, dramatic lighting and abstract set design were used to convey emotion. Films included an antagonist who was usually depicted as an iconoclast and their actions often resulted in pandemonium and terror. Out of German Expressionism came Film Noir, a coined phrase used to describe dark and cynical films that followed World War II (Dirks). Expressionist films like Nosferatu, are attributed to the creation of modern-expressionism in American films. Nosferatu and No Country for Old Men include similar main characters, ominous-looking camera shots and sets, and instances of fixation and insanity portrayed by the main characters.…

    • 861 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    degenerate art

    • 1050 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The early twentieth century was a period of wrenching changes in the arts. In the visual arts, such innovations as cubism, Dada and surrealism—following hot on the heels of symbolism, post-Impressionism and Fauvism—were not universally appreciated. The majority of people in Germany, as elsewhere, did not care for the new art which many resented as elitist, morally suspect, and too often incomprehensible.[2]…

    • 1050 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    History of Art - Cubism

    • 982 Words
    • 3 Pages

    These colours and need to express emotions led to different movements of expressionism, the Fauves (wild beasts) which had artists including Van Gogh and Gauguin, German expressionism was more extreme, Abstraction came after this and cubism was one of the forms that led heavily from it.…

    • 982 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Three Penny Opera

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Bibliography: * Allen, Roy F. Literary Life in German Expressionism and the Berlin Circles, 1974…

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After WW1, materials became once more available to the arts and expressionist directors used large and elaborate sets which added extra dimensions to the genre, like screening images onto the stage or having moving sets.…

    • 1109 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    guwop

    • 2329 Words
    • 10 Pages

    from Europe who had been driven from their homes. This allowed America to step into…

    • 2329 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Abstract Expressionism mainly comes from “Surrealism”, which represents spontaneous artwork. In combination, abstract expressionism has an image of being rebellious and highly idiosyncratic. Abstract Expressionism can be mostly applied to “Action Painting”, “Figurativism” and “Colour Field Paintings”.…

    • 317 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    | In Expressionist Art, the artist tries to express certain feelings about some thing. The artists that painted in this style were more concerned with having their paintings express a feeling than in making the painting look exactly like what they were painting.…

    • 772 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, expressionism is “a 20th-c movement in art, literature...seeking to give symbolic, objective expression to inner experience.” In his essay, “Anderson’s Expressionist Art,” David Stouck writes,…

    • 1059 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    world cinema

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The years between 1919 & 1933 are considered the Golden Age of German Film. During this time, UFA was producing hundreds of films per year, and was even a real competitor to Hollywood. Of course silent film was especially important because without spoken language films were easily exported and appreciated worldwide. German filmmakers pioneered several new film styles during these years, most famously film Expressionism. Typically, this style relied on the distortion of film sets and mise-en-scène to…

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    One might ask, "Since most artwork is used as a way for an artist to express him or herself, what makes this expression period anything special?" On the general level "Expressionistic art, whether literature, painting, music, or cinema, often involves intense psychic disturbance and distortion in the perspective adopted by the artwork." "It is remote from the objective or realistic portrayals of the world, as well as from the happier emotions." To bring a more defined meaning to the overall theory of expressionism, two philosophers play a large role. The first notarized expressionistic philosopher was the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy who was followed by his counterpart R.G. Collingwood: a twentieth-century English philosopher. Together they hold the two best known expositions of the expression theory.…

    • 1530 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays