German Expressionism

During the period of recovery following World War I, the German film industry was booming. However, because of the hard economic times, filmmakers found it difficult to create movies that could compare with the lush, extravagant features coming from Hollywood. The filmmakers of the German Universum Film AG studio developed their own style by using symbolism and mise-en-scène to add mood and deeper meaning to a movie, concentrating on the dark fringes of human experience.

The first Expressionist films, “The Student of Prague”, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920), “The Golem” (1920), “Destiny” (1921), “Nosferatu” (1922), “Phantom” (1922), “Schatten” (1923), and “The Last Laugh” (1924), were highly symbolic and stylized.

The first Expressionist films made up for a lack of high budgets by using set designs with wildly non-realistic, geometrically absurd sets, along with designs painted on walls and floors to represent lights, shadows, and objects. The plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal, and other "intellectual" topics.
The extreme non-realism of Expressionism was short-lived, fading away after only a few years. However, the themes of Expressionism were integrated into later films of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in an artistic control over the placement of scenery, light, etc. to enhance the mood of a film. This dark, moody school of filmmaking was brought to America when the Nazis gained power and a number of German filmmakers emigrated to Hollywood.

German silent cinema was arguably far ahead of cinema in Hollywood. As well as the direct influence of film makers who moved from Germany to Hollywood developments in style and technique, which were developed through Expressionism in Germany, impressed contemporary filmmakers from elsewhere and were incorporated into their work and so into the body of international cinema from the 1930s onward.


A good example of this process can be found in the career of Alfred Hitchcock. In 1924, Hitchcock was sent by his film company to work as an assistant director and art director at the UFA Babelsberg Studios in Berlin on the film The Blackguard. An immediate effect of the working environment there can be seen in his expressionistic set designs for The Blackguard.
Stylistic elements taken from German Expressionism are common today in films that do not need reference to real places such as science fiction films, e.g. “Blade Runner” (1982, Scott).