Expressionist Movement in World War I: Anti-German Propaganda in American Films

Choose any 3 film movements that we 've covered to date and discuss (a) the historical forces that influenced the film movement and (b) the major contributions associated with that particular film movement (c) while discussing a major director and film associated with each movement.

The expressionist movement was historically influenced by the First World War. During the 1st world war the German films were not doing well at all compared to other film industries of the world. When the United States entered into the war the anti German propaganda started to greatly come in effect. German saw United States as an enemy because Germans were perceived the bad guys in American films. This movement was a drastic measure taken to defend against the anti-German propaganda that was produced. It was this measure that had the UFA (Universal Film A.G.) formed by the German High Command. The purpose of the UFA was to promote Germany through direct screen propaganda and inform audiences of German culture and German education. We studied one of the most known influential films during this period of time. That film was Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari). This film was released in 1920. This movie was based on the story by Hans Hanowitz and Carl Mayer. This film was also known as starting the expressionist film movement. The expressionist type of director/filmmaker basically can construct a landscape that is artificial but still inspiring and bold. The German filmmakers were able to do this in a studio and had total control over the amount of detail that they had. It started to be seen as more realistic than expressionistic. This couldn’t have been done without German painter-architect designers mainly because the realistic studio was just an array of artists working together. The story dealt with expressionism dealing with insanity. This story was supposed to portray the revolt against an insane authority and this was represented by the main character Dr Caligari. Throughout the film you find out that the doctor has been dealing with his own psychosis and by the end of the movie he can now helps his own patients since he now is better. There may have been some underlying messages with this movie when it was first made to represent Germany fighting against the insane authority of the United States in the war. By the end of the movie the watcher can begin to realize that there is in fact nothing wrong with Germany at all, it just appears to be that way. The phrase it’s all in your head” comes to mind. Even today this kind of ideal did not go away. In 2001 there was a movie named Enemy at the Gates directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. The movie itself deals with a German and Russian sniper basically playing cat and mouse during the battle of Stalingrad. The reason I reference this movie is because of the use of propaganda to raise people’s spirits and to make a turning point in the war. When there was propaganda released that there was a “hero” the Germans had no choice but to send in their best sniper to answer to the propaganda of the present one. The style is still used even in today’s movies. The surrealism film movement started in the early 1920’s. This movement was well known for its writings done by the surrealistic members and its use of visual artwork. Paris, France was the main city that took advantage of this movement. This movement was very much dependent on the French invention of photography mainly because French painters excelled in changing shapes and colors and could turn them into anything they wanted for their purpose. The point of this was to reflect the specific volume, tone, moods and structures of life. The artists of the movement realized that the moving of pictures had the capabilities of changing specific shapes, images, lights etc and they then could design their own kind of art. This is what was referred to as “tricks with time, juxtaposition, transition, and form” (p242) this created a universe which was then seemed very much irrational. This is how The Passion of Joan of Arc was done successfully. The Passion of Joan of Arc was produced in France in 1928. This film was accredited as the film that was completed without the actors wearing make up. The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and he made great use of using the camera effects. Carl was able to show visual surprises and make the world we recognize look bizarre. Joan of Arc was regarded as a solid landmark of cinema, mainly because of its production, its precision direction and the performance of the actors. In fact the performance of actors in this film has been described as being among the best performances in film history. This adds to the success of the film. The story itself of Joan of arc follows the sufferings of the woman martyr, Jeanne D 'Arc (Joan in English) who lived between the periods of 1412-1431. The story goes on to show how Joan appears in court for trial where there are corrupt judges forging evidence against her. When she is in her actual cell she has priests that interrogate her and deny her the right to go to Mass. By the end of the movie she gets burned at the stake. The death of Joan causes a revolt with the crowd and the soldiers standing guard have to turn on them. So to summarize the entire film in a certain perspective, The Passion of Joan of Arc portrays the time she was a captive of the English, on trial with them and focuses on her torture, execution and imprisonment. How this film fits the surrealistic movement is the use of the visual effects. It is a silent film that uses white walls forcing the viewer to focus on the facial features of all the actors. When the actors faces are focused on then the viewer can accurately see the human features with the absence of makeup. This is a visual trick to have the faces of the actors jump put at the viewer and absence of background colors leaves the viewer less distracted. The Passion of Joan of Arc was labeled as the “ultimate silent film, ultimate example of the power of purely visual expression” (p249) At the time this film was released the use of its visionary effects as well expressiveness made other films that were out at the time seem to be no comparison. The Italian neorealism movement was a movement that was most important because of its dedication to the sound era. This movement had film makers try to inspire the viewers and used movies to force the viewers to care and think about what they were actually watching. These type of movies excited viewers and stood toe to toe with the current and previous political crises. There are a lot of key characters that make the neorealism movement distinct from all the others. Neorealist films are filmed generally with actors that are not professional actors. When the non professional actors were not used then well known actors were the ones used in the leading roles. These roles could have been anything and often had the actors playing against their normal character types. This was done strongly in a background that had local public instead of extras brought in specifically for the film. These types of films are usually shot directly on location and are done in the countryside and poor neighborhoods. The plots message involves life among the less fortunate and the working class of people. The realism is always recognizable mainly because the performances that are done are mostly accomplished from certain scenes where people are doing activities that the lower class would do. The other thing that this film movement kind of signatures is its use and non use of children at the same time. What I mean by that is neorealist films can use children in major roles but the child in that role mainly is for observation not really for participation if that makes sense. There is a film we actually covered in this class that made its debut with this film movement. The Bicycle Thief. This movie was made in 1948 and was directed by Vittorio De Sica. The story itself tells of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his bicycle that was stolen from him. This bicycle is important because he needs it to be able to work. The man also has a son who doesn’t really do much for the screen but his presence is what’s important like I was saying earlier in this paper. The movie narrates the story of person called Antonio Ricci, who is an unemployed man in the post-World War II economy of Italy. So WW2 is an influence on this film obviously. HE is married with 2 kids and gets a job hanging posters on the condition that he must use a bicycle for work. In the movie itself the character is told "No bicycle, no job." The character attains a bicycle from a pawnshop type establishment and is later taken by a thief while he is working. From this point on the character of this film starts to seek the help of others (police, family, friends) to roam the streets of Rome (alliteration totally not on purpose) to find his stolen bike. The character has no luck at this point and his help abandons him. Some time later in the film Antonio does eventually bump into the thief but the thief denies all allegations and even the police state that unless he caught the thief red handed then he is not guilty. Later on in the film Antonio then tries to steal a bike himself but is caught and beat up and the movie ends with he and his son in somewhat of a tear jerker scene.

Discuss the following films in terms of how cinematography and editing affect the way the audience perceives: The Man With a Movie Camera, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Tokyo Story, and Seven Samurai.

The cinematography and editing affected the way the audience perceived The Passion of Joan of Arc mainly by focusing on her suffering and making it very clear what her emotions were. Extreme close ups of Joan and the bishop and middle zoom shots of the smaller groups the cat was shot with very bright lights giving each item on the actor and actresses face extreme detail. There was no makeup used in the movie. They also used a lot of bare white walls in this film to make the audience hone in on the human features of the actors. The set was designed with asymmetrical doors and arches which allowed the films camera to move at the same angle of the archways it went through. The Man with a Movie Camera took a somewhat different approach. It included the audience directly. In this film the director used a movie theater (which the audience would be sitting and watching the film in) and showed how the seats in the theater would fold down by themselves to greet the onlookers of the film. Another thing the director did was including the human eye and compares it to the lens of a movie camera. This technique forces the audience to see the film as somewhat of a continuation of what we see with our own eyes as humans. Still frames were also very noticeable in this movie mainly because the movie has to stop at certain points for it to be done. With anything in motion if stared at for a certain period of time and it stops you will notice the stopping because of its difference in motion. The director of this film (Vertov) was skilled at showing how much film itself compared to normal life. By that I mean he broke down what the audience calls “cinema” and put up a fictional mirror and showed how it could easily be compared to every day work life in factories or the production of a car tire etc. There are wheels of a car like there are wheels of a film. This movie was noted for its change of speed and splitting of film. It made the audience respond positively. Tokyo used the effect of cinematography and editing with its pace. The pace was very slow. I think that this forces the audience to pay attention to what is going on during the film itself. Another thing that was done with this movie was the use of speaking with the characters narrating parts of the film. In watching this film the commute that the old couple took to Tokyo was never shown, they just literally showed up. The filming style in this one also differs a bit from others because the camera really doesn’t move like it does in the Joan of Arc. It stays at the same height never going up or down for a better part of the whole movie. No ceiling shots like in Man with a movie camera or close ups like Joan of arc. While the pace and the non moving would probably put people 30 years or younger to sleep, it would more than likely have a different effect on the older crowd of audience. The crowd of people that don’t need flashy lights and crazy camera movement to watch a film. The Seven Samurai used editing to reflect a mixture of panning in and out. This is done to get a reaction out of the audience. The movie itself combines zoomed in shots followed by zoomed out shots to add to the dialogue of the characters. It does a great effect for intensity. If bandits are attacking a town the director would then zoom in on a peasant whose house was burned down. The peasant could say “I hope they all burn in hell!” and the effect of the facial expression zoomed in makes the audience feel the emotion of the peasant a lot more than if he was standing with a bunch of other people zoomed out. This is how the director excelled with this film.

Compare and contrast The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with Pandora 's Box as representatives of thefantastical/mystical and the realistic/psychological traditions of the German Golden Age.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligri definitely falls under the Fantasy section of the German golden age. The movie itself is about murder and is a horror based film. It twists in a psychological format as by the end of the film it turned out the entire variation of the film was in the DR’s head and he could then help his patients in reality. So this film hits the mystical and the psychological points of the German Golden Age. Pandora’s Box on the other hand is something more in the realistic sense. I do not doubt that something of this nature has happened before many times to women over the world. This movie has an effect of psychology in the sense how Lulu was able to control or mesmerize the men she came in contact with. She was like a hypnotist the way she was able to keep their attention. There was no real sense of or mythical fantasy in this particular film as it was mainly following the story of Lulu. However it did feature someone notorious in horror “Jack the Ripper”. This adds to the horror aspect of the film and the famous torso killer of 1888 brings the movie to an end with a bang. The psychological effects of both movies ads to the expressionist style of the German Golden age and the viewers during the movie aren’t really meant to understand exactly what is going on. Both movies end with somewhat of a surprise ending that you really couldn’t see coming. Both films deal in a personal sense where each main character is complex in a way that motivates the audience to pay attention to the concepts presented in both the mystical and fantasy type films.

Discuss film as political commentary in any four films that we 've watched during the first half of the semester.

From a political standpoint Pandora’s Box was pretty controversial because of the same sex subplot that was used. The actions took place between the characters of Countess Augusta Geschwitz and Lulu. The German capital was actually known as the capitol of lesbian activity around the late 1920’s. It is somewhat ironic because to be a homosexual was actually illegal in Germany for a very long time. It’s possible that it still may be illegal. I watch a lot of movies and I have seen it at least in three of them where there were acts of homosexuality followed by police arresting the offenders. It’s been portrayed in V for Vendetta as well. The most recent version of it. I bring this up because it may not necessarily be a coincidence that acting on homosexual feelings is illegal but yet there is a German cinema portraying a subplot of lesbianism. There were feminist and pro lesbian movements that started coming up as well after this film was made in the 1920s that have been portrayed in movies. I wonder after watching this film if it had anything to do with it. The Man with a Movie Camera was done in a way that stated anywhere can be reached. This was done by a Russian director who used random clips to make a movie. In fact he made it his mission to not make a documentary type film. The message of the film was kind of in a sense of a camera can go anywhere but back then the cameras weren’t very tiny and sleek how they are today. The film itself was an experiment and was one of the things that audiences didn’t really like about it at first, but was appreciated later on. Russia wasn’t known as a place where you have the freedom to do what you want. It was in the 1920’s that the head of the unorthodox church was killed in fact Stalin. I was on an Age of Empires binge for a while. I learned a few things. SO this movie here having a underlying plot of go where you want when you want is somewhat of a slam on the political views of Russia at the time. It’s very moving and sends a positive message. The Seven Samurai played a big part in its history. It even was the movie responsible for the creation of our own movie The Magnificent Seven. From a political view the movie has a somewhat ranchers vs. farmers kind of duel which is something that has even happened in the USA before. It goes back to the homesteaders and Cowboys in the late 1880’s. The despair is what is focused on in this political view in the sense that this movie ends in kind of a depressing way. Just like every battle and world war that has been done. Kind of sends an underlying message of the pointlessness of fighting and the shooting of the graves at the end of the movie could be a symbolism of blame for that exact reason. Just something to think about. Ikiru is probably the most political relevant film that we have watched so far. This film deliberately portrayed a message of breaking off what we Americans would call traditional obligations to the unnecessary social venues. When this separation from the larger social groups is done then there is personal achievement of some kind. So in this sense the movie promotes the inner power of the individual to accomplish things on his/her own instead of relying on others to assist them with their issues. Through watching this movie you see how unreliable family and friends are. This kind of hits a nerve because the character himself has a son and works his ass off for his son who doesn’t really appreciate him. In fact his son dismissed him once as a “Petty Bureaucrat” The relationship becomes so bad that the main character (Wantanabe) actually states that he doesn’t have a son and becomes closer with a coworker then he is with his own family. This type of message in the film kind of goes against the message we have in our own country. WE promote things like an ARMY of one. Our US Navy is promoted as a fleet of brother and sisterhood and that problems cannot be solved alone. There was a film released called Annapolis where a cadet was attempting to make it through the naval academy and one of the officers told him that “You cannot will yourself through this place”. The cadet constantly refused help and wanted to do things his own way and it wasn’t until he started relying on others for help that he finally started achieving great things in his unit. The movie in itself is anti-community and anti-social. It’s almost as if it expects each person to pretty much fend for themselves and not worry about anyone else.

Works Cited
Mast, Gerald. “A Short History Of The Movies” tenth edition Pearson Education, Inc
2008

Cited: Mast, Gerald. “A Short History Of The Movies” tenth edition Pearson Education, Inc 2008